


when you're ready to go (try not to make it so painful)

by gayreids



Series: the act of holding on and letting go [1]
Category: Iron Man (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anorexia, Bulimia, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Steve Rogers, Purging, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Whump, civil war happened but nobody talks about it bc everyone's emotionally constipated, kind of, tony literally just doesn't know what to do and i feel sorry for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-04 19:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17310476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayreids/pseuds/gayreids
Summary: bitter, acrid word vomit splattered the walls, the words "relapse", "eating disorder", and "fragile" spelled out in alphabet soup.





	1. the repetitive nature of everyday life

**Author's Note:**

> i won't say not to read this if you're struggling with an eating disorder because i know i ignore every warning like this i see, but i will say that i hope you find the health and recovery you deserve one day. you are never alone, despite how much you feel it, and the first step to recovery is admitting that you need help.

  
  
if peter was an artist, he'd create pictures of the inside of his head and hang them in every place he'd contemplated hanging himself. he'd use some kind of thick paint, he thinks, and so many different bright colours that they'd all end up clashing. peter would hope that anyone who would dare to look at his work would come away with a headache and the same  _ (unanswerable, painful, terrifying) _ questions about living and death that he contemplated during every waking moment. there would be words upon words upon words, all cramped together on one part of the canvas while abstract blobs and half finished objects would scatter the rest of it.    
  


ever constant would be the colours.    
it was a special kind of violence, really, how much he thought. if peter could tip all  his thoughts out into a bucket he's sure that its mass would be immeasurable and its magnitude would rival that of a dying star. peter was trying not to go supernova but the inside of his head was constantly exploding into colour and light, providing stress headaches and mental disorders instead of a fully functioning brain.    
he's not sure when (or why or how or or or  _ or _ -) he decided the best course of action would be to abstain from food but peter thought he could trace it back to never having enough money as a child even if he didn't understand the concept of trading seemingly worthless coins and notes for food, or even bullies who'd called him "fatty" (he realised now that this was only because in the fifth grade, they didn't exactly have a plethora of creative and/or original insults to use and so 'fatty' was the default).    
  


when he was thirteen, he'd spent a good six months avoiding food like the second coming of the bubonic plague. he'd restricted and exercised until he'd passed out, and thrown up any food he dared to eat. he forgot the taste of every food he'd previously loved and watched as his body started to break down before getting scared of how often he was starting to collapse and gaining most of the weight back (but never quite all of it).   
  


then uncle ben died, and his whole world violently threw itself off orbit, tumbling through outer space until it spun completely upside down. his relationship with food transformed completely, too. he'd started eating his feelings, swinging in almost the complete opposite direction that he'd previously been travelling in. he'd save up all the money that he'd receive for weeks or even months and then hit every super market and a fast food chain within four miles of his apartment, looking to get all the food he could for the amount he could spend. sometimes he'd even shoplift, but the shame and guilt he carried around afterwards manifested in an even lower self esteem than before. a lot of the time, peter would eat so much in such a small amount of time that he'd end up throwing it up, his body not physically capable of accommodating it all. when that happened, he'd grit his teeth and keep eating until it happened again. it was ugly and dirty and he felt like the whole of queens had seen him vomiting on the side of the road next to a gas station late at night (in reality, the only person who he or his aunt knew who had outright seen him was mj, and that was only because she was in the middle of an art project where she'd picked 'neon lights' as a prompt, so she'd started frequenting gas stations when it got dark. she'd slipped a counsellor's pamphlet about eating disorders into peter's backpack the next day and watched with quiet dejection when he found it, crumpled it up, and threw it in the bin). his aunt may certainly wasn't an idiot, and she knew that something was wrong but she didn't know how to bring it up without causing him to completely shut down. a couple of months after this particular cycle became the only part of his life that mattered, peter started shoving his fingers down his throat to induce the vomiting himself instead of letting his body do all the work. after all, what the hell did his body know about what was best for him?   
  


after a while (after the spider bite) it levelled out, and he ate normally again, even if he still saw food as an event that he could either choose to participate in or not, instead of what healthier people saw it as. that had been six months ago, and while he considered himself recovered, sometimes there were days or weeks where he felt like the weight of the food he was eating would literally drive him insane.    
  


as with many things, this particular cluster of problems this time around had its own trigger (because water can build up behind a failing dam but there comes a time where a rock tumbles through the river and decimates the stability of the barrier, letting all the water and mud and heaven knows what else roam freely) and that trigger had come in the form of a " _ someone's hungry _ " before a chorus of laughs from the avengers' dinner table, likening his own eating habits to steve and bucky's.    
  


peter didn't want to think about the fact that it was a well meaning joke, or that he needed to eat just as much and steve and bucky did, or even the fact that the avengers probably thought he was a reasonably well adjusted young adult who  _ didn't _ implode at the first hint of ridicule. really, he should have been able to take a joke. he knew there was no malicious intent at all behind the incredibly light teasing and could even recall steve getting the same treatment the week before. he didn't think about that, though. he didn't want to.    
  


what peter did want to think about was how the feeling of dizziness after fasting for seventy hours absolutely wrecked him while also making him feel like the king of the world, even when a strong breeze could knock him unconscious. he wanted to think about relapse after relapse after relapse, and how exhilarating it would be to starve until his heart gave out and his hair was falling out in clumps.    
  


peter was hunched over in the shower with two fingers jabbing at the back of his throat. every movement felt like a heart attack and each heave his laboured stomach gave sent him ever closer to collapsing. he held onto the shower's wall, took his fingers out, and bowed his head so the water flowed through his hair. it would be terribly inconvenient for him to pass out given his current situation. peter wondered how soon after falling mr stark would be alerted, and what his reaction would be to peter lying in a pool of his own puke. he could imagine the headlines.    
(' _ stark intern dies naked in pool of own vomit inside stark tower! _ ')   
  


there was a time in peter's life, when he was younger and naïve to how low one person could sink, when he'd doubt

what he was doing or maybe even stop. peter thought about the idea that there were lines that he'd crossed that he could never double back over. letting himself fall this far meant that while he could physically recover, he would never ever not have to fight for every plate of food he ate and kept down. not for the first time, peter noted with a sort of apathetic curiosity that he needed help, and that nothing healthy came out of thought processes like his.    
  


he shook his head, watching as the water droplets from his hair launched themselves around his head like a halo, and put his fingers back into his mouth, fingertips resting on the very back of his tongue while he dared himself to bring the rest of the food up, even if it killed him. his hands tasted like shame and disappointment, the word "recovery" burned into his skin from the inside out until it was like a brand, taunting him with one of the few things he could never have. peter had played at recovery for a couple of months but it seemed like all he was destined for was failure.    
  


the bright colours from the inside of his head leaked down through his eye sockets and down his nose and even through his ears until it was all spewing out of his mouth, a rolling tide that tasted like hell and didn't look much better. all the world was silent. in the shower, nothing could hurt peter parker. nothing could touch peter parker while he purged. the sound of water raining down on the floor of the shower combined with the occasional wet slap that meant another surge of vomit had been expelled was overwhelming, and suddenly peter felt like he'd never heard anything louder or felt so utterly helpless. if it was possible, he felt stronger than he had in months, even with the helpless panic that was starting to set in. he controlled what went into his stomach, and now he was controlling what came out of it. 

  
it all came out in intervals, and each time peter silently retched, his heart faltered as if it was unsure it was still allowed to beat.    
there was so much vomit. peter couldn't stop coaxing it out, even though he felt like he was one wrong move away from fainting, and tears were flowing freely down his face. he knew that by chewing the food, he gave it a bigger surface area and he also knew that mixing all of it with stomach acid and the water he'd downed would make it seem like there was more food than was actually eaten but he didn't care. he just wanted it  _ out _ and to send it all down the shower drain to be forgotten in the bottom of a sewer. peter was almost frantic now, even with the tiredness that had rendered him almost unable to move during his more severe depressive episodes, and the only reason he wasn't sobbing was because he couldn't breathe around his hand and the vomit and the water from the shower and and and-   
  


everything stilled.    
  


peter felt empty, in more ways than one. he paused to straighten his back and run his hands over his stomach, poking and prodding at it as if it would shrink away when put under scrutiny. faintly remembering that stomach cramps would start to set in soon just like they always did, peter decided to just get out of the shower and rejoin the rest of the avengers in the common room. if he got there before the cramps got too bad, he could feign illness when they started and use the false malady to avoid food for the next week or so before he could go back to aunt may's. she was in ohio, of all places, at a work event that she couldn't miss because of her upcoming promotion. peter tried to be happy for her but at the same time, he just wanted her back.    
  


eventually, the guilt of lying about being physically sick to defend himself and his recently returned eating disorder would eat him alive, but that was what peter was aiming for anyway so it didn't matter.    
he remembered the counsellor may had made him go to when he was at his worst saying that "one relapse doesn't necessarily mean you're ill again" but oh, if peter was already hooked on the feeling of being full and becoming empty, he was either ill again or fast approaching it.    
  


with a dim kind of curiosity, peter noted the fact that his fingers were shaking. he flexed them and then turned his attention to the still running shower. he picked up the shower head and pointed it at the vomit, sending it to squelch down the floor until it reached the drain. finally, he washed his hands with shower gel, covering the stench of hydrochloric acid and failure with the scent of eucalyptus. his movements had a mechanic calm about them, as if he was artificial and only allowed to be human when he was actively harming himself. peter certainly didn't feel human in those moments, and was working the after-purge-cleanup mostly from muscle memory instead of using his conscious mind to pick up the pieces after throwing them down.    
  


soon, there was no evidence left of the purge, apart from peter's awful breath (he read once that you should wait for half an hour after throwing up to brush your teeth- something about wearing away enamel- so he's leaving that for later).    
  


the very earth neglected to turn as he walked to the mirror after shutting off the water and assessed his appearance, hoping that he at least didn't look like someone who'd just relapsed. he smiled manically at the steamy glass, trying to find some humour in the grim situation. when it became clear that nothing he could do would make him feel better, peter stared dead into his own eyes. they were red rimmed and looked dead, and they had dark circles under them that grew each day. that was probably because of his insomnia, but the circles would only grow as his relationship with food got worse and worse. he understood now why people in movies shattered their mirrors by punching them upon seeing their reflection. 

 

peter thought he'd been recovered but purging in the bathroom of  _ the stark tower  _ seemed monumental somehow, as if he'd skipped tumbling down and had woken up in the morning at rock bottom instead of in his bed.    
  


"alright," peter started, trying to gauge just how bad his voice sounded, "let's do this." he stepped out of the bathroom and got dressed without looking into the mirror or even switching the lights on in his bedroom, even though his curtains were closed. 

  
-   
  


standing at the top of the stairs leading to the common room, peter was suddenly struck with a pain so strong he nearly doubled over. he settled for clutching at his stomach with one hand and using the other to steady himself against the wall, clenching his eyes shut and taking sharp breaths through his teeth. he didn't think about how the last time he'd been in that position was less than half an hour ago except his fingers had been down his throat. he could still feel them, the way he could always feel his fingers there every time he swallowed for the few days after purging if he hadn't done it in a while.    
the hallway seemed to be something out of a horror novel, somehow never ending even though the end was (literally) in sight. conscious of his strength and that he didn't want to accidentally crack the wall (even if tony could afford to have someone in to fix it), peter sat on the top of the staircase and leaned against the wall instead of bracing himself with his hand. both his arms wrapped themselves around his middle and his jaw tensed. the pain seemed to roll and roll and roll, coming in waves of varying intensity. at one second, it almost felt as if peter could stand up and walk the fifteen metres between his location and the common room but at the next, his stomach seemed to burst into a bright, piercing point of agony. he felt his body rebel against the treatment he'd given it and silently told it to shut up. peter knew what he was doing and didn't need something as insignificant as his brain sending a couple of pain signals to tear him away from his goal, and all he really, truly wanted was to hurt himself. it'd stopped being about his weight incredibly early on, and now self destruction was his main aim. the weight loss was simply a side effect.    
  


peter knew what having his body torn apart felt like after thanos, and it honestly wasn't far off from how the after effects of a purge felt.    
  


gritting his teeth again, peter pulled himself up by the stair's bannister the second the pain faded into something manageable. he turned on his heel and walked back to his bedroom, leaning against the wall when the pain became too much (and if he'd slumped down and cried half way, at least nobody was around to see it). he hoped that he didn't leave handprints or stains from his wet hair on the walls.    
  


when he finally made it back to his bedroom, peter collapsed on his bed and looked up at the ceiling. he knew that friday wasn't actually a human being who cared where one looked when they talked to her (it?) but he just thought it was polite to at least try.    
  


"fri, can you send a text from my phone to tony's that reads the following: 'mr stark, i think i'm coming down with something so i think i'll stay in my room instead of joining everyone for the movie night. sorry.' "   
  


"sure, peter." the a.i.'s voice seemed slightly... sad. peter didn't know if that was possible but then again, he could be just projecting, right? "boss has replied to your text message. shall i read it out or do you-"   
  


a knocking sound thudded through peter's aching head, reminding him that unless he wanted a dehydration headache on top of whatever the hell this newest problem was, he should probably drink some water.    
  


"y- yeah?" peter croaked, his voice somehow sounding worse than when he tested it out in front of the mirror not even an hour before.    
  


"it's me, kid. can i open the door?" tony asked. peter groaned and hit the back of his head against the bed frame. why would tony abandon his team- his friends- just to check on some "sick" fifteen year old? peter murmured for him to come in, hoping that the low sound indicated that he'd given his permission.    
  


maybe he really was getting ill. he felt weak already and he was starting to shake. he felt incredibly hot too but that could've been embarrassment.    
  


while caught in his own head, peter didn't notice that tony had sat on his bed until he felt a gentle hand on his forehead. tony looked down on him, trying to assess how sick he could be and if they needed to call a doctor in, even if it was the weekend. tony would never make peter wait for the sake of work hours, even if it was only sunday evening and helen was on call from 6am on monday. the boy looked weak and pale, and he didn't know for sure, but peter seemed to be unconsciously grasping at his chest under the cover.    
  


"fri, what's his temperature?" tony asked while still looking at peter.    
  


"his temperature is normal, boss. thirty six point six degrees celcius or ninety seven point eight eight degrees fahrenheit."   
tony frowned. that definitely didn't match what he was seeing, but he held off on calling every doctor he knew. something definitely wasn't right with the kid, and it was slightly unnerving.    
  


"kid, how do you feel?" tony asked, immediately realising how stupid the question sounded.   
  


"like shi- like crap," peter replied, grimacing slightly as another cramp hit. they were lessening in intensity now but he still needed to convince tony that he was ill, or at least feeling under the weather, so that he wouldn't bug peter about eating anything too big. "my stomach hurts a lot and my head aches," he added, the words all rushing out at once, tumbling over each other in the air.    
tony smiled sympathetically, smoothing peter's hair back. he hated lying to his mentor (or was it more misleading? he knew he wasn't sick but he certainly wasn't lying about his symptoms) but at least he could avoid food now.    
  


suddenly, peter was hit- no, slammed- by self loathing and panic so strong that he felt as if he needed to scratch his skin away with his nails to get to all the fat on his body so he could tear it out and his heart beat faster and faster and suddenly he couldn't breathe and he was hitting his chest lightly to try and get it to work until-    
"peter? peter, try to breathe, okay? try to breathe along with me, just like this, okay?" tony tried to pick peter's hand up to put it on his chest to show peter what full breaths looked like when an animalistic wail echoed throughout the room, and peter honest to God scratched tony's hand before the older man could react and were those--   
  


"what the fuck is that?" tony gulped out in one huge gasp for air, joining peter in the 'not being able to breathe oxygen' club. "on your right hand. what is that. peter," tony said flatly, actively holding himself back from losing his mind (at least, in front of peter). the boy's mind stopped, and he honestly couldn't have replied even if he'd wanted to (which he very much didn't). the patch of wall that was slightly lighter than the area around it seemed so incredibly interesting at that moment, so much so that he didn't take his eyes off it at all.    
when it became clear that peter wasn't going to answer him, tony let his mind process the information he'd just recieved. on his surrogate son's hands, as clear as day, were russell's marks. there were red scratches on the pale skin of his knuckles where his hand had rubbed against his incisors when he'd- oh God.    
  


"i need you to understand that i'm not angry with you, but i need to leave right now in order to calm down before i say something that hurts you. i love you," tony said evenly once he'd regained his ability to breathe and thought he could talk without screaming or crying or even throwing up ( _ imagine _ the irony).   
  


he stood up, smoothing down his shirt, and walked out of the room, seemingly making a conscious effort to tread lightly. in his playboy days when he spent his time either wrapped around a bottle or a model, he’d seen those exact same marks too many times to count. every man, woman, and person he’d come across with russell’s marks had received a referral to therapy that had all been paid for. tony thought that when he’d settled down with pepper and spent most of his time around people whose jobs it  _ wasn’t _ to keep up with an impossible ideal, he thought he’d seen those marks for the last time. 

 

the feeling he’d had when he saw them on  _ peter _ , of all people, was a feeling that drove people to insanity over time. he never,  _ ever _ wanted to feel like that again. 

 

when he was finally gone, peter started to cry huge, heaving sobs. this was supposed to be the one thing he could control- the one thing that was completely his- and he'd had to fuck it up and spill the beans without even saying anything. for the first time, peter had word vomited without anything even coming out of his mouth. bitter, acrid, imaginary vomit splattered the walls, the words "relapse", "eating disorder", and "fragile" spelled out in alphabet soup. it made peter want to gag.    
  


somewhere in between choking on spit and wiping away the snot that never seemed to go away when he started crying, he lost himself.    
  


even if peter tried to tell anyone what happened in the hours after that, he wouldn't have been able to. that whole time period became a colossal gap in peter's memory. there was no doubt that it was ugly, and that he would probably die crushed under the weight of the shame if he ever managed to remember what happened but... there was nothing.    
peter's mind emerged from under water when it turned dark. there was still no sign of tony, and when he asked friday, she said that nobody had asked about him. he tried not to feel disappointed.    
  


"how long has it been since mr stark left?" peter asked, voice quivering slightly. he wanted so bad for it to only be somewhere in the realm of half an hour, or even just two or three.    
  


"it has been five hours and thirty six minutes. shall i tell him you asked that?"   
  


"no."   
  


five hours and thirty six minutes. that had to be breaking some kind of record. his dissociative episodes hadn't lasted any longer than two hours in more than a year.    
he'd been at his lowest weight, back then.    
peter cursed himself, trying to get a grip on his emotions (even though his hands may well have been doused in oil for all the grip he got). one purge did not warrant all of these... issues flaring up.    
  


(really, it made sense for his emotions to be a mess. he burned a  _ minimum _ of 15,000 calories a day because his basal metabolic rate was so high. human bodies only needed a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose a pound of weight and the small part of his brain that remained rational told him that not keeping any food down for almost twelve hours would have sent his body and mind into a complete meltdown.)   
  


(the irrational, self destructive goblin that lived in his brain whispered that six hour dissociative episodes were secretly a good thing because it meant he wasn't eating and not eating for all that time would mean that he resurfaced almost a pound lighter than he would have been if he'd eaten.)   
  


peter's hands had long since stopped shaking and the russell's marks he'd gained (the fucking snitches) had faded. he realised that they'd probably stayed long enough for tony to be able to see them because of the stomach acid that would've gotten into the wounds but he couldn't help but take it as a personal moral failing.    
  


with eyes that never faltered in their eagle-like inspection of the backs of his hands, peter decided that he wanted to eat anything and everything that he could get his hands on and throw it all back up with so much force that he tore through his stomach and decimated his oesophagus. he needed to tarnish his body with anything that he could put in it and then purge it all, wiping himself clean until he glittered.    
  


there was a sort of calm chaos around peter as he made his way to his personal mini-kitchen. he'd flat out refused anything too big, which he slightly regretted now, but he still had more food there than he'd usually eat in a month. each footstep rang in his ears and he swore he could feel the blood rushing to his head, making him dizzy with anticipation.    
  


he'd forgotten how  _ alive _ planning a binge made him feel. it was so visceral and raw that if he peeled back his skin, peter was sure that he'd find that the liquid from glow sticks had replaced his blood.    
  


finally, he reached the room. his eyes widened slightly, overwhelmed and wanting to shove everything down his throat at the same time. he'd read somewhere that it took twenty minutes for the stomach to start digesting so he set a timer for fifteen (just to be safe) and started it. he unearthed a box of pop tarts from the cupboard nearest to him and put them into the toaster.    
  


when the timer ran out, the kitchen looked like it'd seen four natural disasters and a small army. in fifteen minutes, he'd already managed to put a sizeable dent in the food supply (even though he'd asked for a small kitchen, what he thought of as small and what  _ tony-fucking-stark  _ thought of as small were two completely different things) and there were so many different kinds of food packaging littering the room that it was like a colour wheel had taken residence and invited the secondary and tertiary colours over to stay the night.    
peter clutched his stomach, groaning slightly because of how full he was. he may have had a super healing factor but the phantom of his previous pain remained and wasn't going to be forgotten about without a fight. 

 

not believing for a second that he'd be able to make it to the bathroom in time, peter leant over the kitchen sink and the press of the edge of the counter into his stomach was enough to make him puke up his guts. he braced one arm on the other end of the sink and it warped slightly under the sheer force he exerted on it. he wasn't sure when he'd started crying but he could feel his face getting increasingly wet. he couldn't breathe and it all just _kept coming up_ , surprising even him with how little he had to help it along with his fingers in his throat. his legs buckled and soon his weight rested on the hand that he had on the sink and his stomach from where it rested on the edge of the counter. this only served to increase the force and frequency of his heaves. he could taste the perverted versions of pop tarts and chocolate and cheese and bread and custard and even half cooked hot pockets (that were rubbery and disgusting because he'd decided he couldn't wait until they actually cooked properly), among other things. after the three minute mark, he'd lost all pleasure in eating the food and simply gave in to the primal desire to _consume_ all that he could.   
  


not for the first time that day, peter thought that he'd die in a pool of his own vomit.    
  


he felt a calming hand on his back, rubbing circles while a deep voice cooed sadly and told him that everything would be alright. another hand held back the hair from his sweaty forehead. peter started crying harder, if that was possible. nobody could see him like this. it was humiliating enough that he'd spilled all of this to tony without saying even a word but for somebody to see him at his worst?    
  


between the vomiting and crying and now entering an anxiety attack, peter's face turned a colour that was dangerously close to purple, the oxygen deprivation finally affecting him. he couldn't stop all the fucking vomit and his chest and throat burned. for one, horrible second, peter hoped that he'd die.    
  


soon after that, when he realised he was empty and the promise of stomach cramps loomed over him, peter turned the tap on at full blast to wash down all the undigested chunks of food that hadn't made it down the drain. letting the water do its job, he turned around and locked eyes with (no surprises here) tony.    
he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand while tony tried his best not to look absolutely horrified. the staring contest only lasted a couple more seconds before peter started trying to pretend that tony didn't even exist anymore. he turned back around to shut off the tap and started gathering the wrappers in his hands and stuffing them into the bin before doing the same to another group of wrappers, and another before they were all thrown away. peter was just starting the sweep the crumbs left on the table into his cupped hand before tony spoke.    
  


"are you just going to pretend like nothing happened just there?" he asked, trying so hard to make his voice sound like the man he tried to be every day ( _ unbreakable, invincible, graceful in his strength and yet ruthless _ ) but failed so badly that peter questioned whether that was really tony stark talking to him or if it was an imposter wearing his face.    
  


tony, seeing that peter had chosen to tense his jaw and start tidying even more quickly decided to go for the low blow. "you almost  _ died _ , peter. i was genuinely scared for your life." that made peter freeze. tears were welling up in his eyes and in all his fifteen years of life, he'd never thought that simply not talking could ever be so hard. "do you know how close i was to calling an ambulance? you went to long without breathing while you were... i thought your body would try to breathe as a reflex before you were done and that you. would.  _ drown _ ," tony went on, trying to get peter to see. all he wanted was for peter to see how not okay this was.    
all he needed was for his son to accept the help he was trying to give.    
  


peter let his hand drop the crumbs he was holding and clenched his fists, trying to keep from blurting out all of his issues and emptying his brain to tony. he still needed the control. he still needed the cleanliness that came from his cycle. it was like bleaching his insides. he hated himself so much, and letting himself fail only to fix it until he was shiny and new and perfect let him believe that he had some semblance of a self esteem.   
  


of course, he couldn't say that out loud.    
peter stole a breath, the air feeling like a knife on his sensitive teeth, and slipped to his room.    
  


tony stood in the middle of the kitchen, feeling lost. the evidence of the past forty five minutes had been erased and he felt out of his depth.    
  


peter let the stomach cramps get him in their iron grip until he passed out from the pain, his face crumpled like tin foil.    
  
  
  
  



	2. remembering a room that isn't there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if he just kept his focus up, he wouldn't fall down

when peter woke up the next morning after a staggering three hours of sleep, the first thing he did was swear under his breath and ask friday where he could get painkillers. his head felt as if it was being split open; as if tubes and tubes of acrylic paint had been emptied into a crack in the middle of his forehead and it was starting to lazily leak out, thick and mixed with brain matter. peter thought he could lay there and die, surrounded by warmth and quiet, instead of the absolute shitshow he's sure will be his demise. yeah, it’s an occupational hazard, but he’s adamantly against the very concept of him dying unless it’s by his own hand. sure, he was in pain, but at least he’s in pain as well as physically safe and away from the world and everything that could hurt him (except for himself, and he’s been looking for a way to get out of himself for a  _ long  _ time) _.  _ just for a second, peter took comfort in pretending he could die in his bed before getting up and padding over to the kitchen, where all the painkillers were apparently kept. 

 

the morning sun against the interior of the tower shed (literal) new light on everything around him. it was one of the very few times he’s stayed the night but he’s usually been too preoccupied with getting to the lab to work on a suit or web fluid or whatever the project of the week was to really take in the sight of the sun. despite practically having the body and strength of a shrunken down captain america, peter still needed at least nine hours of sleep every night to function. the fact that his legs both felt like they had resistance bands strapped to them probably meant that both the missed sleep and the food related antics of the day before were catching up with him, so peter was careful to walk slowly, especially if he was actually going to succeed in his goal of not eating for another twelve hours, so his attention was firmly on the features of the modern architecture that somehow still reminded him of archaic “futuristic” buildings. he told himself that if he just kept his focus  _ up _ , he wouldn’t fall down. 

 

the fact that he was very much within his own head comparing the inside of the tower to the death star didn’t stop friday from blaring out some sentence with the words “boss” and “lab” in them. with a sickening jolt, peter remembered that tony stark still existed and that he’d  _ seen _ the marks on peter’s hands and even  _ witnessed _ a purge. he felt small prickles of a psychosomatic ache in his chest but he hit his sternum gently with a closed fist to make sure it didn’t grow into any more. when he realised what he was doing, he uncurled his fist  _ (one finger at a time come on don’t be such a coward stop hitting yourself nothing is wrong)  _ and laid his hand gently but decisively at his side. he took a couple of shuffled steps before deciding to cradle the offending arm against his torso. peter really didn’t need friday sending warnings about  _ public self harming behaviour _ to tony stark. he really didn’t. 

 

because peter was honestly too startled and worn down by early stage malnutrition to catch the rest of the sentence friday had projected at him, he decided to regain his footing and mentally prepare himself before asking friday to repeat her sentence.

 

“yes, master parker. boss wants to see you in the lab after you have your breakfast,” friday replied with the voice of a personal assistant with too much to do and too little time to do it in. (years and years ago, pepper would’ve sounded exactly like that. it made someone wonder exactly how much work she was doing every second of every day, enough that one forgot that she was not, in fact, actually alive or inhabiting a body) (yet).

 

the first thought that elbowed and kicked its way into peter’s head was  _ nonono _ he was  _ not _ going to eat breakfast  _ thank you very much _ . the second thought seemed to spark into fruition like a poisoned fruit among an award winning crop and whisper into his ear that he didn’t  _ know _ how many calories were in the painkillers that were in the kitchen, so of course he couldn’t take them.

 

taking a deep breath and remembering that tony could track his every move and that he should really prepare for a worst case scenario (because  _ everything _ seemed to be possible, lately) he took a fortifying breath and walked to the rest of the way to the kitchen like a man walking to the gallows. he certainly felt like he was marching to his death and he realised that he probably looked it, too. he could feel panic rising through his stomach and out of his throat (or maybe that was because he’s already reverted back to bingeing and purging as the default responses to stress) and if peter hadn’t already known what death was like, he would’ve thought he was experiencing it. one, two, three more steps down the hall, peter fixed what he hoped was a neutral but positive expression to his face. if he could push every single emotion he’d had in the couple weeks following his uncle ben’s death into the vomit he produced, he sure as hell could do it in the stark tower where things like having enough self preservation to be able to help other people  _ mattered _ . 

 

tony would be able to see if he skipped out going to the kitchen all together, so peter may as well go there to get a glass of water (or three or four to silence the dull ache of hunger) and stay there just long enough that tony would believe he ate breakfast. peter felt as if his every move was being scrutinised, which it probably was, and that made the urge to just completely fuck up even stronger. in his mind, there was absolutely no use in delaying the inevitable; it was still going to happen, so why wait? he’d already relapsed in a huge explosion of food wrappers and pain so what was one more expensive mistake among the pile he’d already collected?

 

his legs worked without his permission for the last few steps into the doorway, and when finally arrived at the dreaded room, peter froze to see sam (sam- _ fucking _ -wilson) and bucky (james- _ fucking _ -buchanan- _ fucking _ - _ barnes _ ) sat on the bar stools, both eating a huge bowl of cereal each. upon hearing a small shuffle at the doorway, they both saw what looked like the worst version of peter parker they’d seen. he was too skinny, approaching what steve looked like before the serum, and he’d been seriously sick all the time to achieve that (so what the hell was peter parker doing?). he was also practically swaying on his feet, completely fueled by his own stubbornness. sam knew what sleep deprivation looked like, and peter was the poster boy for it. 

 

“hey, pete,” bucky started, “why don’tcha have some cereal with us?” the “ _ i’m slightly worried about you because you look like you’ve lost ten pounds overnight and you didn’t exactly have much weight to lose to begin with” _ was implied. when peter didn’t even reply, instead staying frozen in the doorway for a couple more seconds before rubbing at his face and pouring a glass of water served to only worry bucky more. helplessly, he linked eyes with sam, who chose to rephrase the question and use an overly cheerful tone instead of asking the obvious question of  _ ‘what’s wrong?’ _

 

“hey, pete. what’re u making for breakfast there?” he tried, aiming to get peter to snap out of the funk he was in. he schooled his expression to remain clear and calm, using the tried and tested techniques he’d used with the war vets he often saw at the va. briefly, sam let himself think about how fucked up it was that he was using his training with war veterans to ask a fifteen year old kid to make breakfast but dismissed the thought from his head and locked it in a box that he could examine later. 

 

“i’m having breakfast with tony in the lab,” peter replied. what was strange about his reply, though, was that it was like a different person entirely was speaking. the lines of tension fled, the crease between his eyebrows smoothed out, he gained a small and almost genuine looking smile, and he spoke with the same trademarked peter bounciness that he always had. peter looked sam and bucky in the eyes and started viciously deflecting, almost having it down to an art form due to the number of years spent practising. 

 

“yeah, i should probably get down there, actually. i s- i saw that you beat my high score on the obstacle simulation, mr bucky, so maybe we can go head to head in that multiplayer one?” peter said conversationally, visibly back to normal instead of the massive unaccounted for weight loss. he cursed himself for the stutter, though. he only did that when he was anxious and surely an ex assassin/ spy like bucky would have picked that up. and “mr bucky”? really? they both had to know that something was wrong and peter wanted to claw his eyes out over it. he couldn’t afford to panic so he let his eyes go vacant and his smile grow wider. he took a huge swig of water to quell his growing stomach ache. 

 

turning to check the time on the huge clock above the doorway, peter whistled and exclaimed that he had to go before strolling out of the kitchen, leaving it as a completely different person than when he entered it, taking his false calm with him. as soon as peter was out of sight, sam and bucky looked at each other again, the most bewildered expressions on both of their faces. neither of them had any idea what they’d just witnessed or even if that was normal or not. 

 

“before you say anything, that was definitely weird, but he’s a teenager. man, he’s practically a super soldier, too. his whole life must be weird,” sam said, immediately defusing the panic that had started to settle into the room. he could practically see peter’s tension manifesting as black treacle lazily falling down the walls even though it’d been a solid two minutes since he’d gone. 

 

“yeah, maybe his brain doesn’t work properly until he’s hydrated? that’s definitely when he started to perk up,” bucky remembered, deciding his worry was something irrational, “anyway, when’re you gonna even try out the obstacle simulator? i’m old enough to be your grandpa and i beat a super powered spider on it, wilson,” bucky replied enthusiastically, completely at ease again and shoving spoonfuls of cereal into his smiling mouth between words. milk spilled out from the corners of his mouth and sam groaned, tapping bucky with his phone and exclaiming that this was why he never ate while bucky was in his line of sight. 

 

just like that, the spell was broken and the kitchen was transformed from a liminal space of fake smiles and mood swings back to, well, a kitchen. 

 

-

 

tony didn’t want to believe what he saw when peter walked through the door. the kid looked like he’d collapse if a strong gust of wind blew. he knew that not eating for twelve hours would wreak havoc on peter’s body and cause weight loss that should’ve been biologically impossible in a human being (but peter wasn’t fully human, was he?) but this was so, so much worse than anything he could’ve imagined. 

 

peter floundered at the door of the lab for a full minute, his mouth opening and closing without him noticing as he formed and scrapped possible greetings (or apologies or explanations or pleads to let him stay at the tower). after the twenty second mark, tony had looked away, letting the kid do what he wanted to in his own time. he’d tried to prepare himself for every messy possibility, even absorbing multiple teenage psychology books through fucking  _ osmosis _ while peter was asleep (because heaven forbid tony be occupied when peter needed him).

 

what tony wasn’t expecting, though, was for peter to fix a grin to his expression that looked like it was held up entirely with superglue and a whole lot of faith (but it was too big for his face with the weight he’s lost- oh God) and for him to just start talking like nothing had happened. 

 

“hey, mr stark! i- i thought about what you told me about the merits versus limitations of my, quote unquote, regular spandex suit in comparison to the iron spider and…”

 

to the naked eye, everything was normal. to tony, peter’s cheeriness was borderline disturbing and it was all he could do to not shake the kid and tell him to just let himself act sad because then  _ nobody has to pretend and i have a problem to fix instead of tip-toeing and never knowing if you’re actually happy or if you’d rather be hugging a toilet with two fingers down your throat  _ but he didn’t want to scare peter away. he pretended like he was listening to peter lay out exactly why he preferred his original suit and he pretended like his knuckles weren’t snow white from how hard he was gripping his screwdriver and most of all, he pretended there was light in peter’s eyes (was the spark ever there in the first place or had he been sick the whole time?). tony wasn’t used to a breakdown that spectacular with absolutely no fallout at all beyond the number on the scale reading fourteen pounds lower and the memories of a middle aged man with more experience with fucking  _ soldering _ than human emotion. it was like coming back from a holiday to find that everything in your house had been shifted four inches to the left. it was unnerving but he couldn’t actually pinpoint what exactly was wrong. 

 

“...so yeah, i hope that’s all okay! i love the iron spider but it screams ‘ready for combat’ more than ‘friendly neighbourhood spider-man who’ll help with your groceries if you ask nicely’,” peter concluded, glancing over at tony to make sure he wasn’t in trouble for his preference. he got a face full of tony looking at him weirdly with an expression he’d only seen in flashes before ( _ concernlovefear _ ). peter didn’t like it. 

 

“mr stark,” peter said flatly, almost wishing he could dive bomb out of the nearest window, “did- did you hear me?”

 

“yeah, pete,” tony replied, snapping himself out of his trance and slipping his game-face-mask back on. “do you want to work on making the spandex suit more similar to the iron spider without making it look like you’re fighting off the end of the world?” he laughed then, and it was a sound as hollow as a dead tree. peter looked away and pulled up a holo screen to start making a mind map. 

 

“friday, can you play ‘can’t you hear me knocking?’ by the rolling stones, please?” peter asked. wordlessly, the artificial intelligence complied. 

 

hours passed where the only sounds in the studio not made by tony’s various power tools were various 80s songs that peter had grown up listening to and tony could remember being released, or even played live (“mr stark, i can’t believe you’re a dinosaur!”) or one line quips made by the teenager that only received a half-smile in response. the atmosphere inside the workshop was like the atmosphere of saturn, too full of rocks and ice to land anywhere safely. the tense situation etched away at peter’s projected confidence until he started feeling the patented itch. he needed to get out of the lab, he needed to binge, and then he needed to commit the all-loved, all-feared purge. 

 

he quickly excused himself, turning a deliberate blind eye to tony’s wildly frightened facial expression (that only lasted a second, but both of them knew it happened) to go to his floor. 

 

-

 

the fucking donuts wouldn’t come back out. peter was sat on the shower floor, sobbing and beating the floor weakly with his fists while cursing his grotesquely distended stomach because the donuts wouldn’t come back out. they were like golf balls in his throat and he’d been trying for nearly half an hour but all that would come out was wads of spit. he’d tried absolutely  _ everything _ but the calories from the binge were going to be seeping into his system anyway and he couldn’t wipe his insides clean anymore, not with the layers and layers of fat winding their way around his organs, stopping his heart and crushing his lungs. 

 

after a couple more minutes of practically pulling out his throat from how forcefully he’d jabbed his fingers there, peter gave up. he told himself that he wasn’t crying, and that it was just water from the shower. if he couldn’t tell the difference between a downpour started in his eyes and the spray of a shower head, he could pretend he wasn’t weak. with shaking hands and fingers wet with saliva and bile, he shut off the shower. 

 

“friday, turn off the light,” peter croaked, his voice wrecked from the abuse it had taken. the light flickered, as if friday was thinking about disobeying, but they shut off in the next instant. peter curled up, shivering and drained, and let himself feel every single feeling he’d kept tamped down over the day for the sake of others. he let himself drown in waves of grief, anger, disbelief, fear, and the crushing  _ loneliness _ . he’d never noticed it before because he filled his time with school work and spider-man and trips to the lab but his life was so  _ lonely _ . he didn’t belong in the world of the citizens but he didn’t belong with the avengers either. peter was stuck in the middle and he felt as if he was being torn in two just trying to be good enough so that someone, somehow would want him. 

 

a strange feeling bloomed in peter’s throat and he felt another emotion he didn’t have a name for. he stood up too quickly and used the dizziness to distract himself from his head so he could stay in a haze long enough to get dressed without wanting to cut open his stomach and remove all the food in it himself. he could practically see it, all the horror and pain and then a second of silence, when peter would be empty again. nothing mattered when peter was empty. maybe he wouldn’t even stitch himself back up or let himself heal. not for the first time that day, peter thought about dying. 

 

peter’s fantasies about ending his existence were definitely growing more and more graphic, but he felt less willing and less able to resist. at one point he’d have gotten scared but now, he was glad for any one second he wasn’t thinking about what he could stuff his stomach with and if starting to use homemade emetics instead of his fingers would be worth it because at least he wouldn’t be brought down by marks on his goddamned  _ fingers _ . 

 

speaking of fingers, peter’s hands were shaking. he brought them up to his face (they smelled like non-perfumed body wash because he actually liked eucalyptus and didn’t want to associate it with purging, of all things) and willed them to be still. he faintly registered that his whole body was shaking now and he felt so, so cold. his heart was beating out of his chest in a mess of red and gore and tar in the place of nerves. his breathing sounded like a whistle that had seen better days, all wheezing and various high pitched whines. he grabbed at his throat and wailed, 

 

“fri- riday i’m fucking… i’m fucking  _ dying _ .”

 

his vision blurred (was he finally dying or was he just crying  _ again _ ?) and his eyes bulged out of his head. 

 

this was it. this was how peter parker was going to die. 

 

his door burst open with a sound so loud it could probably have been heard over a rocket blast but tony only had eyes for peter, his peter lying on the floor gripped by what looked like the worst panic attack experienced by a human being. tony rushed to him immediately, trying to gain his attention or at least gauge how aware of the outside world peter was. there was no flicker of recognition at all, and tony’s mood sank even lower than it had already been. peter was writhing against imaginary pain and begging for help through his occasional gasps for air and wild eyes, even though tony started to suspect that he wasn’t in the present moment at all. he looked desperate but feral, and tony wondered how well he really knew peter while putting him into recovery position and whispering comforting words in italian while rubbing his back. problems this horrible didn’t appear overnight; how long had peter been hiding and how could he possibly have hidden so much? this was uncomfortably similar to the whole peter-asphyxiating-on-his-own-stomach-contents incident of just over twenty four hours previous. 

 

the longest twenty four hours of tony stark’s life had started when he’d seen the food wrappers and the small hunched form over the sink after friday had told him that peter was in distress. time seemed to stop whenever he saw the boy he thought of as his son in pain. when tony couldn’t do anything to help but offer a kind hand and a few words while peter came back to reality, it hurt like absolute hell. it practically killed him, seeing bubbly, excitable, kind peter reduced to a sobbing mess on the floor. 

 

tony’s soothing words and touches seemed to slowly coax peter back into the present. his hands stopped stopped grasping at his throat and his eyes no longer had that horrible glassy quality that meant that nothing he was seeing was making it through to his brain. peter moved to sit up but tony pressed down on his back with his hand, guiding peter back to the floor and carrying on stroking the space between his shoulder blades. he didn’t want the boy to faint and moreover, tony just wanted peter to remain still and within his sight just so he could be  _ sure  _ that he was safe. the teen’s face flamed and he almost wanted to cry, not because of the leftover panic, but because tony stark was seeing him at his lowest over and over again. 

 

“do you want me to stay?” tony asked, his voice cracking. everything in his world seemed to crack, eventually. most of the time, all he could do was stand and watch so he could clean up the wreckage later but this time, he wouldn’t stop fighting until he and peter were both out of the hell that was an eating disorder. 

 

peter froze, trying to hold himself together. he genuinely didn’t know if he wanted tony to stay or go. on one hand, he desperately wanted the comfort that came from being cared about by tony but on the other hand, he wanted to crawl back into his skin to never emerge again. the donuts and other assorted binge foods cried out in agreement to that sentiment, loud and angry over the parts of peter that wanted to be loved. 

 

tony nodded silently, interpreting peter’s lack of an answer as him wanting the man to leave but not wanting to offend him. it took all the force he could muster to unstick himself from his son’s side because he’d do anything,  _ anything _ to make him happy, even if he hurt himself in the process. peter immediately started crying again once the contact was severed, so with an internal sigh of relief and an overwhelming amount of love, he hugged peter and rocked then both back and forth. tony knew that his joints would ache and protest being sat on the floor for too long but he didn’t  _ care _ . he could finally take an opportunity to be there for his son instead of trying to navigate a sinking ship and no amount of aches or pains could have dissuaded him from doing that. 

 

eventually, peter’s body stopped shaking and his eyes cleared again. with rational thought back, the self hate came coursing through his veins, as much a part of him as his own flesh and blood. he could feel tony’s arms wrapped around his torso ( _ fat fat fat fat get it out get it out get it out _ ) and tensed, causing tony to look up at his face as if he could just see what was wrong if he looked hard enough. 

 

“please stay but just-  _ please _ don’t touch me,” peter forced through gritted teeth. he couldn’t have anyone touching all his  _ fat _ . he’d rather die than have anyone know for themselves how much space he took up. tony let go of him like he was a poker that’d just been in a fireplace, trying not to feel guilty. 

 

“peter,” tony started before mentally reprimanding himself. he didn’t want peter thinking he was in trouble but he’d gone and dropped the dreaded full name. “i’m just going to say this and get it out the way. you need help.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, if you comment about what your favourite parts of the story are, maybe i'll drop a third chapter!!   
> find me on tumblr (@fuckmarvel) for fic previews and me screaming about various characters :)


	3. if we could just pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you can't solve a simultaneous equation without working out one of the unknowns first

  
“you need help,” tony had said. in all the words that could’ve swam out of his mouth and into the thickness of the tension surrounding them both, it had to be _those words_. tony wasn’t stupid. he knew that telling peter he needed help would probably push him to plan and execute his habits in secret but in that moment, the slight chance that he’d listen was enough for him to try.

peter physically recoiled as though he’d been shot and visibly shut down, window blinds fluttering shut behind his eyes until he was the same shy boy who tried to talk himself out of flying straight into the fiasco that had been the fight in berlin. he stuttered for a while, broken letters and syllables tumbling out of his mouth at an astronomical rate before he finally said-

“i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

peter winced ( _don’t play that dumb!_ ) before sighing and dragging his hand down his face. the only reason he hadn’t simply stood up and walked away was because if he tried, he’d probably collapse. the stomach cramps had already arrived but peter was now used to taking the pain into his stride and letting it turn him into something better (‘ _and i wanted you to be better_ ') instead of letting them incapacitate him like he’d done before. he was done playing damsel in distress.

tony was staring at a shell of peter, and the shell of peter was staring at anything that wasn’t him. he wished he could do something, anything, like remember what the hell the psychology books had told him to do while remaining at enough of a distance to go about it in a way that didn’t hurt both of them, but an emotionally stunted billionaire did not a strong man make. tony wasn’t sure he was ever a strong man to begin with, and this situation simply cemented that thought.

“how long have you been- how long have you been doing this to yourself for?” tony tried, aiming to work out how he could fix this problem. you can’t solve a simultaneous equation without working out one of the unknowns first, and thinking in terms of math and certainty was the only way he was going to be able to think at all.

peter snapped his head up and looked at tony with wide eyes. he’d been expecting threats to hospitalise him, the spider suit to be taken away, accusations that he was _crazy_ , but not a question like that. how could he even start?

“uh, i, um,” he straightened his back and told himself to _keep it together_ , “it’s been a while. i don’t think i’ve ever really had the, uh, best relationship with food.” he stopped then, the chemical imbalances in his brain absolutely screaming at him to _not let him see_. each word seemed to get stuck in his vocal chords, and the image of bees drowning in honey flashed across his brain.

tony took pity on him, already forming a plan of action. he knew he’d have to call may and tell her what was going on (because really, if may had known about this, he would’ve found out about it in some way other than _fucking russell's marks_ ) and there would have to be some way of getting enough calories into him to keep him alive, at least.

“i’ll be honest with you, i really don’t know how to do this. you’re going to have to tell me if i do something you don’t like, alright?” he glanced over, waiting for peter to nod before adding, “i have to tell may.”

“i don’t like that,” was peter’s immediate reply. if it was even possible, his whole world had stumbled into even more chaos and he could feel yet another anxiety attack gnawing at his skin.

“kid, i…” tony realised there was no way he could break this kindly, but he’d rather have peter alive and hating him than six feet under and having died looking up to him, “i don’t see how i can do this without being a complete ass but may kinda has to know, underoos.”

the nickname was an attempt at placating peter, at gaining back some normalcy after being thrown right off script. peter closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. he knew that clenching his fists would look threatening, especially with his super strength, so he placed his hands flat on his knees and pressed down. what he wanted to say was that tony had _no right trying to try and keep things like how they used to be. stop trying to pretend i’m the same person you know after being called to rescue me from my own damn brain three times in two days_ but what really came out was a small grunt. he realised that it wasn’t an example of healthy communication or whatever, but if he was going to break countless rules of healthy living, why not break some more?

“do you want to tell her or shall i?” tony finally asked.

“i’ll do it.”

the tension in the room was so thick it was like tony and peter were trying to wade through molasses. tony kept opening and shutting his mouth, willing himself not to scream at peter to _just eat like a normal damn person_ because he didn’t need a degree in psychology to know that would be a bad idea, with a capital ‘b’ and a capital ‘i’. so many emotions were coursing through him that it was so difficult to push them all away but the instinct to _protect peter_ overrode all else (at least until he could be alone).

peter, finally halfway confident that he could stand without fainting, pulled himself to his feet and left his bedroom without looking back.

\--

he finally had his plan hashed out in his head. peter realised that no, this wouldn’t stop tony and may from worrying about him, but it’d hold them off just long enough to figure out a proper set of rules or just anything that’d let him keep whatever this was up for just a little longer.

peter wasn’t stupid. he knew that tony had eyes everywhere, thanks to friday, and that he knew where he was. he was currently in one of the many spare guest rooms littered around the compound, looking at the light beige wall while trying to ignore the phone that felt so damn heavy in his hand, like it was a cinderblock and he’d just tied it to his feet before jumping off a bridge into the sea. maybe peter was being overdramatic but _talking_ felt so much more like drowning than anything else, and being given an ultimatum and choosing the option that allowed him a few day’s grace before being thrown to the wolves (read: concerned aunt) still felt like he was willingly walking to his own demise.

another thing that peter knew was that if tony didn’t trust him to tell may about his problem, he wouldn’t have given him the option to tell her himself. for the last time before the phone call, peter let his thoughts drift to how terrible a person he had to be to weaponize that trust.

with a deep sigh and trembling hands, peter clicked on his aunt’s contact on the phone and waited for it to ring. (he felt like he’d given a choice between staying in a burning building or jumping out of a fifty story window in an attempt to save himself.) the phone rang once, twice, three times, and he hoped that may wouldn’t pick up and that he wouldn’t actually have to lie to anyone at all, for the time being.

however, the dial tone gave way to a faint click, and then to aunt may greeting him like they hadn’t spoken in literal years instead of just three days before.

“peter! how are you? how’s life at the compound?” she gushed, already enthusiastic even though peter hadn’t said anything yet. the happiness seemed to waft through the phone, exploding in his cheek as he held the device to his face like potassium reacting with water.

“hey, aunt may. the compound’s cool! it’s great, but none of the avengers are here apart from tony because of some stuff happening in washington. we had dinner together the first night i was here, though. tony and i’ve been hanging out, yknow, doing a lot of science-y stuff like usual,” peter rambled, even if the line about him and tony doing ‘science-y stuff’ was mostly false and he knew exactly how dinner with the avengers had ended. the first afternoon of his stay had been spent in the lab but after his spectacular relapse, all his energy had been focused on either food or thinking about food. “how’s work?,” peter asked, diverting the attention away from himself so he could get through the conversation without lying through his teeth.

“it’s so busy here, oh my gosh. there’s also a bunch of boring stuff that i won’t go into unless you feel like being bored half to death,” she replied before giving an exaggerated groan. peter laughed before quickly sobering, realising that if he really was to go along with what tony wanted, this was where his opening would be. he could imagine it, ‘ _hey aunt may, i, uh, need to tell you something…_ ’. alas, peter was many things, but as of late, an honest person was not one of them.

“so, is brenda still stirring things up between caleb and clarissa? oh my- i remember when that thing with the lasagne at the dinner party happened.” bringing up workplace drama and talking about that for another half hour was a sure fire way of staying on the phone long enough for tony to believe that he’d had the conversation (capital ‘c’). he flicked his eyes up to the ceiling and drew a short breath in, his heart rate already rising at his almost-lie-of-omission.

“oh. my. _goodness_. sweetie, you would not believe what brenda told me a couple hours ago! so, what happened was…” may ended up talking about the scandalous affairs of the workplace that hadn’t taken the week off, despite the event going on. peter prompted her with well placed gasps of surprise and little questions that kept the conversation going. by the end of it, his stomach ached with laughter (and that was _all_ that was causing it to ache) and he felt satisfied that his avoidance tactics had worked. peter felt untouchable. peter felt like he was everything wrong in the world.

“okay, honey. i think i’d better go now or my boss will have my head,” may concluded, blowing a kiss into the phone.

“alright may, have a good time! i love you,” peter replied, trying to pour his entire heart into those sentences as if it made up for the enormity of what he’d actively chosen to hide from her.

“i love you too.”

_click._

peter parker’s plan to try and fool his entire family into not worrying about him was go. peter breathed in shakily, tearing his hand down his face. the amount of times he’d done that in the last few days would have usually given him a breakout but his skin had always been perfect since the spider bite. he had resented that when his self hate had reached an all time high. peter thought that it wasn’t fair that everything on the outside should look like he had his shit together while he was lying awake trying to talk his heart into ceasing to beat.

staring again at the phone in his hand and recounting the phone call he’d just had, confusing relief crashed through him, sudden in its arrival and almost overwhelming. the fact that he could have this- the fact that he could _lie_ and _actually get away with it_ was so exhilarating he could barely articulate it. he could have his control, even if for only a few more days. peter took a shaky breath out and smiled manically, suppressing a laugh lest tony hear and think he was going hysterical (he practically was, but nobody had to know about that, did they?). he dropped the phone face down onto the carpeted ground. it barely fell more than a couple inches because he was only sat on the ground, anyway. peter felt _invincible._

back in his personal lab, tony was gripping the edges of a table, sobbing so hard that he could feel where the arc reactor used to be because of how tight his chest was. his breath heaved and he thought of peter, smiling and happy, probably wondering when he could next throw up. he exhaled and it sounded like a tranquilizer dart rushing out of a gun to meet its target. peter had said that he didn’t think he’d _ever_ had the best relationship with food. how the hell hadn’t he noticed? tony raised a hand, balling it into a fist with the intent to punch something, anything, but ended up releasing it until it fell with only a slight thump back on the table.

he was supposed to be peter’s _father figure_. he asked himself again how the hell he hadn’t noticed that peter was deliberately destroying his own body. hell, he could understand that impulse. in his early 20s, tony had genuinely loved to party, racking up a couple hospital stays due to alcohol poisoning or what the hell else. after those years had been and gone, he’d started drinking and working and having what was probably too much anonymous sex (well, as anonymous as _tony fucking stark_ could be) because the weight of his self hatred had to be relieved somewhere, so he spent his time slowly killing himself through bad habits he’d only really broken a year or two before he met peter. he didn’t want that sweet boy to do anything like _that_ to himself. he knew what trauma could do, and how the pressure of simply living had to be released, but he didn’t want peter to end up like _him._

with that thought, tony let go of the table, letting his feet fully support him again. he pulled up the security footage of peter on the phone with his aunt. at least the boy was letting people in and taking the first step to getting better. heaven knew tony hadn’t until he was over double peter’s age.

if he was really going to be of any use to peter, he knew he had to not let himself burn out. as much as he wanted to make peter better and personally see to it that he kept all of his food down, he needed a strong figure to lean on, not a babysitter who would eventually break down under the stress of managing two lives at once.

“friday, call my honeybear,” tony said, his voice already sounding slightly croaky from crying for nearly an entire hour.

rhodey’s face filled a hologram screen, projecting three dots instead of a dial tone because tony could not stand the sound of the things. they were annoying as all hell. tony remembered with a rush that he had to wipe the snot and spit and tears off his face and had barely managed to do that before the call connected

“hey, party guy. what’s up?” rhodey asked, a happy note in his tone. it wasn’t often that tony called without warning and the pleasant surprise had immediately lifted his mood.

“hey, care bear,” tony replied, simply ignoring rhodey’s question. he sent a small smile into the screen and dragged up a chair so he could sit down.

“hey, don’t ignore the question. are you okay?” came rhodey’s obviously concerned reply. worry lines started decorating his face and tony hated himself for being the one to put them there.

a few seconds of silence rang out in the room.

“it’s about peter,” tony whispered, pulling at his fingers because he needed something to do with his hands when he was this stressed. it was either that, or actually punching something this time.

rhodey’s face softened slightly, wishing he was actually there with tony instead of halfway across the world, only projected onto a screen in the lab. tony nearly always looked like crap, too many hours spent working instead of sleeping and the occasional bouts of worse-than-usual depression contributing to his sometimes downright sickly looking skin and dark eyebags. however, rhodey could just make out spots of pink all over tony’s face, no doubt blotchy and raw from being rubbed at when he was crying, and he could hear the slight hitch in his breath when he mentioned peter’s name. he wasn’t not-sleeping yet, but if rhodey knew tony (and he sure as hell hoped he did after forty odd years) then he knew that it was a sure thing.

all in all: whatever was happening with peter was taking its toll on tony.

“do you want to talk about it or do you want to keep on breathing heavily while staring at me?” he coaxed, knowing that tony didn’t talk unless prompted and hated being ‘babied’ (read: reassured).

tony’s face crumpled on a deep exhale, and he’d never looked older than he did in that moment. his skin seemed to sag and crease in on itself like tissue paper.

“he’s- not a word of this conversation to peter, okay?- he’s not eating, and when he does, he eats damn near a quarter of his kitchen and makes himself throw it up again. i _saw_ him do it, the second time. he didn’t make it to the bathroom and he was… over the _sink_ , rhodey. he looks so tired now, and like he’d rather be anywhere but here and i can’t help but be angry at him for being self destructive because the kid can’t turn out like me, jimmy, he just can’t, and-” tony gasped for a breath, realising that his limited lung capacity and speaking for that long without stopping didn’t exactly make a good combination.

rhodey knew peter from the visits he’d made to the tower and compound over the couple years that the young boy had been in tony’s life. he knew how bubbly and excited about the world peter always was, seeing the best in everyone and everything, even when it seemed to everyone else that a situation was hopeless. he broke inside a little, sad that such a soul was incredibly sick, by the sound of it.

taking tony’s pause to breathe as an opening, rhodey started, “is he getting help?” hoping at least that someone who could help him knew exactly what was wrong.

“no, i don’t think so. his aunt didn’t know anything about it until just now. i told him that may had to know, and he didn’t like it but he stepped up to tell her. honestly, i have no idea how i’d get through that phone call myself if i had to make it,” tony said. “i’m going to get someone for him, though. not my therapist, because i think he’d be more comfortable if we weren’t both venting to the same person. it’d need to be someone licensed to work with supers, though. yeah, i’m calling someone tonight.”

“do you need to call _your_ therapist?” the other man asked gently, almost sounding like someone trying to soothe a feral animal.

“rhodey, i am not going to sit down and, what, complain about peter to my therapist! who do you think i am?” tony snapped back. rhodey groaned inwardly, deciding to go with the ‘feral animal’ metaphor. it was always a hit or miss, and sometimes they would still bite when they were scared.

“tony, listen. talking to your therapist is going to help you both in the long run. i know you’re going to try and go into this with guns blazing and i know from when i tried to do the same thing when your mother died while we were in college that it’ll end with you being burned out, and maybe even resenting him when he doesn’t get better,” rhodey reasoned. he could still remember the guidance counsellor coming to their dorm and asking to speak to tony alone, and how absolutely dead he’d looked when he’d come back a few hours later, slightly drunk and stony faced, refusing to talk about what had happened until nearly a week later, when he finally broke down in tears, falling into rhodey’s arms.

“you don’t know that he won’t get better,” tony said, the hard edge gone from his voice. his eyes darted around rhodey’s face, looking for answers even though rationally, he knew he’d get very few.

“look, man. peter’s nearly the same age you were when shit started falling to pieces. maybe you see too much of you in him to stay objective, and that can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you use it. i know that when you started to get your life together, it was because _you_ wanted to, not because of me or pepper or happy borderline begging you to take care of yourself. no amount of love will change peter, but it’ll make it easier for him to decide to change himself,” came the reply after a couple seconds of silence. rhodey could see the raw emotion on tony’s face, could see how dog tired this had made him and how strong the instinct to protect peter was. maybe tony was projecting onto the young boy but the insight that tony had would definitely be useful, even though the two didn’t share the exact same problem.

“i’ll think on that, jimmy. thank you for… you know. just, thank you. i love you, you hear me?” tony gushed, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a show of vulnerability. hell, if he’d already had a nervous breakdown in front of rhodey, telling him how he felt couldn’t be too much more touchy feely, could it? and besides, the guy deserved to know how much he was appreciated. “anyway, how’s europe treating you?”

the dull thud of peter’s fists against a punching bag filled the gym, mercifully empty because the rest of the avengers were in washington (with the exception of rhodey, who was travelling europe). all he could hear was his heaving breath, heavy and warm and winding up and out of his throat like a parasite that needed to abandon its host. he’d decided to forgo the boxing gloves, needing some relief in the sharpness of pain. he knew that even if his accelerated healing wasn’t so accelerated anymore because of the food he refused to keep down, it would be enough to repair any minor injuries he’d get from punching too hard, anyway.

the sand in the bag gave way to peter’s hands, and peter relished in the fact that his knuckles were red and not for the usual reason. his arms were burning but he refused to stop, imagining that he was punching his problems away. briefly, he imagined himself punching tony but internally waved that image away. just because tony wanted to help, didn’t mean peter needed to (overtly) be an asshole about it. he could just push all his emotions to the back of his brain where they’d fester and… well, he could cross that bridge when he got to it.

the brutality of the physical activity served to put a screen between his thoughts and his consciousness, as if every idea that crossed his mind was simultaneously there and not there, or simultaneously his and not his. while he was punching that bag over and over again, nothing was real and nothing mattered while the reality of life was crushing and everything mattered more than everything else in the world.

peter jumped back from the bag like a boxer jumping back from an opponent in the ring, bouncing from side to side on the balls of his feet. everything seemed so intense in the pain of starvation; the texture of sweat soaked clothes on his skin, the sound of his own pulse beating in his ears, the colour of his knuckles like a red rose blooming against all odds in an otherwise snow coated garden. he batted at his head, unwilling to concentrate enough to execute the fine motor skills needed to neatly brush his hair behind his ear, and kicked the bag with all the strength in his deprived body. he took another breath, shaking his head so quickly from side to side that he felt like he’d have thrown up if he’d carried on any longer, and kicked the bag again. harder.

“captain rogers is approaching, peter,” came friday’s voice from somewhere over his head to the left. peter outwardly gave no indication that he’d heard these words but in truth, just didn’t acknowledge them beyond understanding their meaning because he didn’t want to break his rhythm. he’d only just stopped imagining an oversized pack of donuts in the place of the punching bag. (peter was starting to become afraid of them in an oddly detached sense, after replaying the ‘panic attack after failure to purge donuts’ incident over and over again in his head. they were starting to become something like a mythical beast in his mind).

the door slid open, bringing a small gust of frigid air with it. peter registered two footsteps and a pause. the hairs on the back of his neck rose as if he was cold instead of burning like a star falling through the atmosphere. after a little over ten seconds of this, peter stopped. he let himself stand in a position that could be seen as halfway relaxed and stopped the swinging of the punching bag with an outstretched hand. the middle knuckle on it didn’t look quite right, and hadn’t for a while, now peter thought of it, but whatever. if he could break it, he could heal it. if he hadn’t eaten enough for his body to heal, that was too fucking bad.

he slowly turned around before coming face to face with steve rogers himself, now sporting a new beard. it made him look different, a bit like how when you find out a particular piece of information about a person that seems to go against everything you think you know about them and you never quite look at them the same way anymore.

“when did you get back? i thought you were still in washington” peter asked, almost startling himself with how incredibly like himself his voice sounded. (in retrospect, peter admitted that he didn’t know what he expected, really, but after that bout of animalistic rage and such a prolonged period of single minded violence, admittedly against a non sentient bag, maybe he’d expected a wolf-like growl).

“about an hour ago. the rest of the gang went to their offices to finish reports but i finished mine on the jet back,” steve answered, remembering the surprise on everyone else’s faces when they saw how well he knew his way around his laptop. honestly, the amount of time he spent on it due to how huge a role he had to play in the logistics side of being an avenger meant that it’d be worrying if he _didn’t_ know how to use computers at this point.

peter nodded, trying to tamp down on the raw energy he still had running through his veins. he could feel his knuckle trying to push itself back to its regular place and the itch made him want to go back to the punching bag and break his entire hand.

“can i help you?” he finally said, his tone of voice making it sound like a statement rather than a question.

“i was just admiring your skills. you got moves, pete,” steve replied, looking decently impressed. “say, is there any, uh, _reason_ that you were beating the living daylights outta that bag?” he said, maybe a moment after finishing his previous sentence. peter looked like a feral animal ( _like father, like son_ ) who would pounce and attack if any further provoked, more out of fear than anything else. steve realised that peter was trying to keep his cool, especially because he didn’t really know steve that well, but it wasn’t working as well as the younger man thought it was.

“no,” peter answered, probably far too quickly. his chest was still heaving but his breaths weren’t audible anymore.

“you sure? listen, if you ever want to talk to someone who isn’t tony, i’m here, okay?”

“you didn’t exactly share that sentiment when you threw part of an airport at me, but okay,” peter mumbled under his breath.

“pardon?” steve asked. he’d heard what peter had said perfectly (oh, the perks of super soldier hearing) and while it was true, the-avengers-plus-peter had agreed that they wouldn’t talk about it anymore. there was a line in the sand, and peter had just run past it, his feet kicking rocks into the air and leaving a trail of dust that, by the time it settled, left peter nowhere to be seen. he was giving peter a chance to backtrack because he knew first hand, because of how he himself had lashed out occasionally during his first couple years out of the ice, that if someone was angry at something, eventually it faded out into being angry at everything.

“steve, i’m sorry, i just-” peter groaned under his breath and reached up to beat lightly at his chest again. he hadn’t done that in more than a whole day and he craved the comfort of the familiar self soothing pats he’d give himself. “i _just_ ,” peter started again, that particular sentence fragment sticking itself in his throat. he looked helplessly at steve, who could swear he’d gotten whiplash from how fast peter’s mood had changed but he didn’t let it show. he put on his best press-tour-poker-face and inched forward.

“hey pete, do you need anything?” he asked. “do you know where you are?” the second question rattled inside peter’s head until the purpose of it revealed itself; steve thought he was dissociating, or at least under some great psychological stress.

he wasn’t entirely wrong but at least peter was now aware of his surroundings. if steve had come back maybe half an hour earlier, peter might have attacked him in confusion.

“yeah, the avenger’s compound. downtown. i don’t know, mr rogers-”

“please, call me steve. mr rogers makes me feel like i’m a hundred and ten years old,” the older man replied with an easy smile, trying to dispel the tension in the room with a joke. peter’s shoulders came down, now not so close to his ears from how clenched up he held himself. peter laughed nervously.

“i don’t know, uh, what i need. i’m not, yknow, dissociating or anything. not anymore. i’m sorry for what i said, though, that was a cheap shot at you,” peter apologised. what he really needed was to crawl out of his skin and tear apart his own flesh apart with his fingernails until he was in such tiny fragments that he could cease to exist but he couldn’t exactly say that to america’s golden boy- or anyone for that matter. now that he was coming out of his trance-like state, he started to feel how cold it was in the room. he also remembered his arms were bare.

he crossed his forearms against his chest, hiding them from the rest of the world. he couldn’t have all of his _fat_ exposed, peter thought feverishly. his eyes flickered all around the room, trying to remember if he brought a jumper or if his manic mindset after his phone call had scattered his mind so much that he’d forgotten the self hate he usually carried with him everywhere he went. his heart palpated and he almost threw up bile from the sheer anxiety.

“hey, hey. c’mon back here. you’re in the gym with me, okay?” came steve’s voice swimming up through peter’s need to cover himself until he jolted back to reality.

“i- i’m sorry but i have to go, i’m sorry,” peter said through tightly gritted teeth, squeezing past steve in the doorway.

steve watched the boy leave, knowing better than to chase after him. he didn’t exactly know what happened, but he knew that spider-man was in trouble and he wanted to help the kid. maybe it was the soldier in him but he wanted to _help_ and to _protect_. ‘no man left behind’ was never taken more literally than it was by steve, and sometimes it seemed like trying to save everyone was like trying to navigate a sinking ship to shore.

tony. if anyone knew what the hell was going on with peter, it would be tony.

with that thought in mind, steve went to the dumbbells and started on the middle weight, aware that he shouldn’t really push himself while there was nobody there to spot him. the routine of lifting up and pressing down ( _extend, relax, extend, relax, extend relax extendrelaxextendrelaxrelax_ ) didn’t soothe his mind like it usually did. there really was something wrong with peter. he was usually more upbeat and usually looked more like a kid than a war weary veteran. he’d only seen that particular look in tony, bucky, and natasha's eyes, plus some of the soldiers he’d met as captain america, and it was disconcerting even when an adult had that look but on a child it was downright _scary._

finally placing the dumbbells back into their places, steve sighed and rolled his neck, realising that there was no way he’d be able to concentrate on exercise the way he needed to. he really needed to figure out what was wrong with the kid, or at least tell someone who could work it out.

“friday? could you call tony, please?” he asked, looking at the top left corner of the room, where he imagined friday’s eyes would be if it (they? she?) was a corporeal being.

“yes, captain rogers,” she answered, displaying tony’s contact picture on the wall using a projector he couldn’t see. he’d specifically requested a dial tone they would’ve used back in the 30s because tony preferred silence while the call connected and that put him slightly on edge for reasons he wouldn’t be able to explain to someone who hadn’t been alive back then.

“sup, capsicle?” came tony’s voice through the surround speakers after maybe fifteen rings. he looked worse than usual, the dark undereyes that had become a staple on tony’s face seeming darker and worry lines seeming deeper than they had been only a couple days before.

“are you okay?” steve asked, before suppressing a wince. tony almost never showed what he perceived as weakness around him anymore (the civil war had definitely played a part but from the way he acted around most other people, it seemed like steve had been demoted to an ‘everyone else’ status, instead of ‘close friends’ like they had been before) (to tell the truth, it made steve’s heart break a little).

tony laughed and it was a bitter, hollow sound that reminded steve of the cynical laughs of the jaded youth during the great depression. “i’m just the same i’ve always been. what did you call for?”

“it’s about peter,” steve started hesitantly, instinctively knowing that he was already on somewhat shaky ground, “i think there’s something wrong with him and i thought i should tell you because you’re dearer to him than i am. maybe if you spoke to him, you could get him to tell you what’s wrong.”

“first of all, there’s nothing _wrong_ with him,” tony snapped, “he’s not _defective_. he’s just peter.”

steve picked up on the minute pause between the words ‘just peter’ and wondered whether the problem was much bigger than just a bad day. “i’m sorry, tony,” he said, trying to play the role of peacemaker between them. it seemed like he’d been doing that too much that day.

tony looked straight into the screen for what felt like hours but what was really probably only a few seconds. even from the other end of a video call, it still felt like tony was staring straight through his soul just like he always could. maybe he was staring into steve’s brain and all the grey matter residing there. maybe he was staring into steve’s heart and the muscle that was beginning to beat faster and faster. “did you try and talk to him?”

“yes. i didn’t get anywhere.”

“can i pull up the security footage?” ouch. that stung. tony didn’t even ask for steve’s recollection of the events (again, the civil war probably played a part but he was tired of shouldering the blame of every single problem within the avengers, even if steve sometimes would lie awake at night and think about how much he deserved it).

“go ahead, tony. i got nothing to hide,” steve said diplomatically. maybe if he kept proving himself over and over, tony would finally learn to trust him again. he wasn’t going to bring a little thing like trust into the conversation, though. not when peter could be at risk.

“cool. have a good day,” tony concluded, ending the call before steve could say anything else. why did he feel like their relationship was taking steps backwards?

\--

_peter was punching a bag over and over again. the sound of his fists sinking in almost sounded like he was punching in someone’s ribs. he was brutal, making up for his lack of technique with sheer enthusiasm, if that was even the right word. sweat was pouring off him in rivers._

tony watched the security footage of the gym, where he’d been told by friday that steve had tried to talk to peter. for the sake of giving peter some semblance of privacy, he’d chosen not to track his movements before the gym, knowing that however he’d reacted to the phone call with may would have been painfully personal, and a huge breach of trust on his part if he were to watch the footage, even if it would be helpful in figuring out why he felt like he did. at least he hadn’t made himself throw up. friday would have alerted him if the boy had.

_thud. thud. thudthud. thudthudthud._

tony fast forwarded the video, not wanting to watch the manifestation of his anger and fear and sadness and whatever the hell else had driven him to beat the shit out of that inanimate object. at least he hadn’t punched a wall.

_the door to the gym opened and steve strolled in. the man looked relaxed until his eyes landed on peter, studying him as if he was a curiosity. after a few seconds, peter stopped and turned around._

tony watched the conversation between the two with audio before rewinding and watching again without audio so he could focus on watching their body language. peter had taken an attacking stance when he’d been on the punching bag but as soon as the conversation with steve had started, he’d shifted into a position he usually took as defence. steve had remained visibly relaxed the entire time, even if he’d probably been asking himself what was going on.

huh. interesting.

what tony had taken from the video was that while steve may have been genuinely trying to help, peter started lashing out when people picked up on his issues. tony felt like a bad person for being relieved that peter lashed out at people who weren’t him, because at least it wasn’t personal. it was probably instinctual. if so, it could take years of therapy to even scrape the surface of why he was doing this to himself. tony wondered, not for the first time, how well he truly knew peter.

closing the hologram screens, tony put his head in his hands. he contemplated making food because he hadn’t eaten since the morning but the thought of ingesting anything while peter was clearly at war with himself over food was nauseating.

tony wondered if eating disorders were communicable diseases.

 


	4. i clung to you hoping we'd both drown

peter could feel himself winding and wasting away like a bobbin of string only used occasionally. he could feel his bones digging down painfully into wherever he sat down (he barely sat down anymore, though. you burn more calories when you’re standing) and was out of breath more often than not. whenever he stood, no matter how slowly, the edges of his vision faded into a tantalising black as he swayed slightly.  _ go on _ , he’d think,  _ maybe this’ll be the day i collapse and stay down for good.  _ whenever he was alone, sometimes he’d sit down for some long period of time before standing up suddenly, just to feel the rush of blood in his head and the blood thumping through his body like he was pressurised air. he’d let himself sway on the spot as he hugged himself with arms that still looked as big ( _ fat _ ) as ever and enjoy the sickly sensation. 

 

he’d deny that to anyone who asked, though, because that sounded  _ sick  _ and he wasn’t  _ sick _ . 

 

visually, he could pin down no difference in his figure, no matter how many reflective surfaces he looked in or how many times he pulled his shirt up to look at his stomach in the bathroom only minutes after he’d woken up. he decided one day to look at pictures of himself taken a month before and compare that with what he saw in the mirror but ended up dissolving into a pile of tears and sweat when he looked at himself and saw his whole body expanding like a balloon. after that, he’d tacked a piece of black card to the mirrors in his room and ensuite bathroom. the voyeuristic relationship he had with his own pain had started to become too unnerving and too real for him to ignore, and seeing himself swell with his own eyes had triggered an anxiety attack. 

 

of course, not knowing for sure what he looked like only made him try harder to lose the weight he was so sure he still had. 

 

one part of  _ trying harder  _ was realising that that while friday was programmed to avoid lying to tony if possible, she would also overlook that particular line of code in favour of keeping  _ sir  _ happy and anxiety attack free. it only took a few short minutes of negotiating to keep the little  _ accidents  _ between him and her, on the condition that if peter did himself internal damage that wouldn’t fix itself within two minutes or if he passed out, tony would be called. 

 

peter had smiled in celebration, and gone straight to the kitchen after that. 

 

the binges had evolved in size, going from a thousand calories a sitting to more than three thousand in a matter of days. his stomach, always swollen and aching in the immediate aftermath, shrank freakishly quickly, and if peter had a few hours to spare then he’d simply watch in disgusted awe as it wasted away, looking as if nothing at all had happened once four or five hours had passed. sometimes he’d sit in absolute silence all night, wondering what he’d become and why he was treating food like heroin. if he pressed against his eyes hard enough when he cried, firework explosions behind his eyelids morphed into food packets, the bright foil concealing the pure misery juxtaposed with relief. the stillness came last, when peter had drained his whole body of water through his tears and after he’d thrown up. there was a calm void, enticing and poetic in nature, offering the chance to start again as if it wasn’t the reason peter needed to start again in the first place. 

  
  


in a desperate bid to make tony believe that he was genuinely getting better instead of just exploiting the artificial intelligence that he was so proud of, he spent more time in the lab after his little conversation with captain america. if his plan was to work, he couldn’t let anyone see that anything could even be slightly wrong. peter put on layers upon layers so that he’d look the same as he always did, healthy and with padding that wrapped around him like an armour. he created web fluid and joked around and played 80s songs like the old times. peter and tony created and created, making inventions that would save the world and dazzling the rest of the avengers with new technology. tony’s eyebags shrunk to their normal size and steve’s wary looks became less and less frequent, eventually vanishing completely once he saw how  _ so very fine  _ peter was. 

 

his smile became so wide that it was all teeth and saliva, his jaw set as if determined to fool the enemy into thinking that they’d won when in reality, he had another few aces up his sleeve. 

 

peter’s hair had devolved into a greasy mess around day five of his relapse, thanks to his accelerated metabolism and the side effects of his starvation and the exertion of vomiting coming too quickly. his physical self deteriorated quicker than it did a year and a half before then when peter was thirteen and wasting away a week at a time. if only  _ that _ peter could see how quickly he lost the weight that the younger version of him struggled to lose over a few days. there was the  _ physical  _ and then there was  _ peter,  _ and the young boy was unwrapping  _ peter  _ like a christmas present, tearing away quivering fatty tissue and blood filled muscle until he got to the person inside. peter washed his hair every day and told himself that constantly smelling like scent free soap was a better alternative to looking like he’d crawled out of a deep fryer. 

 

the rest of the avengers filtered into everyday life at the compound but mostly only saw peter in the communal living room. clint had zeroed in on peter’s sunken cheekbones, one of the only effects of his weight loss that wasn’t easily concealed with a couple of sweat shirts, but had kept his mouth shut. he rightly assumed that it would’ve been untactful to comment on the teenager’s lost weight but he still let his eyes linger a little, knowing that with or without a super metabolism, visibly losing weight in just the couple days that he and the rest of the gang had been away wasn’t healthy. he’d looked around, locking eyes with natasha and jerking his head subtly toward the kid. she’d nodded but made a lip zipping motion. clint dropped it then, because having trusted natasha with his life multiple times meant that he could trust her opinion on a boy that he barely knew himself. 

 

peter could handle his own life, couldn’t he? 

 

the rest of peter’s days and nights had blended into one another, a mess of avoiding food, eating food, throwing up food, and creating an outline for tony’s latest iron man suit ( _ one of these things is not like the others _ ). sometimes he sparred steve or bucky, because he refused to lay a finger in anyone else because of his super strength. his atrophying muscles were still strong, and peter still could give the two men a good run, which was all that mattered in the light of day. he collected praise like trinkets that he could put on his nightstand and went to sleep when the sun went down, congratulating himself on another secret well kept. his weight slowly declined, but judging by the fact that there was now nobody telling him that he needed  _ help _ , he wasn’t doing anything that needed to be worried about. the fragile sense of stability he’d crafted for himself crashed and burned spectacularly every time he purged, and sometimes he’d find himself wishing he hadn’t told friday to hide his problems. he half wished that someone would catch him, or notice his slight sway every time he stood, or ask him why he rarely ate with the team. he knew that if he was confronted, he’d do everything humanly possible to hide his  _ secret _ , though. it was a paradox that peter didn’t understand, but he convinced himself, somewhere along the line, that it didn’t matter. 

 

after all, something was only a problem if you could stop it, and if peter didn’t try to stop, he could assume that if he tried to, he’d succeed. if he told himself it was his choice that he was hunched over the toilet, or stuffing half cooked food into his mouth, or collapsing on his way back to his room, then it would mean that  _ it  _ wasn’t controlling him. peter parker was in control. 

 

he’d received an email, though, about an appointment with one doctor zelah (who specialised in  _ eating disorders _ ). peter let himself boil over and drown in the resentment he felt toward tony for daring to try and fix him, as if  _ repairing  _ him was even possible. in the dark, he let himself become a creature that fed on anger and self hatred, something that screamed  _ don’t fucking look at me i’m disgusting go away  _ and then deleted the initial consultation form, as well as the digital appointment confirmation. he drafted and sent an email requesting for the appointment to be cancelled in the space of only five or so minutes. peter parker was not someone who needed a therapist, or the pity of a billionaire who was probably projecting onto peter because he thought he saw his younger self within peter, or because he saw something that could be  _ fixed _ . he wasn’t one of tony stark’s damn robots that could be maintained or a problem that he could throw money and therapists at until it went away. peter parker was in control of who he saw and when, and besides, he didn’t have an  _ eating disorder _ , even if he now weighed slightly less than he’d weighed when he was thirteen and anorexic. he ate too much to be anorexic, and he wasn’t even going to open the can of worms that was the  _ b word.  _

 

with a calm monotony a person could only achieve through sleep deprivation, peter crawled out of bed and changed his clothes. it’d been seven days since peter had arrived at the compound, and it was time for him to leave again. may’s work conference had drawn to a close and there was even talk of her getting a much needed promotion. he untacked the black sheet of paper he’d stuck over the mirror on his fourth day there and marvelled at his reflection. he was surprised to see his own face reflected back at him, even though he rationally knew that it was still him who inhabited his body. part of him thought that by now he’d have purged everything that kept him tethered to his physical form. 

 

tony watched peter drag his bags to the elevator, laughing to himself slightly when he remembered that he’d only arrived with a backpack and a small suitcase but had accrued metric fucktonnes of natasha’s weird russian cooking (almost as if she realised what was going on. could she? no. she’d just always been fond of the other spider in the group, which had to be why she’d given him so much food. even so, there was a creeping fear that she could actually, genuinely read minds) (tony wanted to pull her to the side and ask what the hell peter was thinking, most of the time). 

 

there was a bittersweetness to seeing his surrogate son leave. he was genuinely looking better, even gaining some weight back and not complaining that the whole compound was too cold even when the thermostat was cranked up to ninety degrees and tony could feel himself slowly dying of heatstroke. he’d always obliged when peter asked him to turn the heat up, though, trying not to let it show on his face that he knew peter was practically freeIng all the time because he’d burned through all his fat stores, and the spider genetics that had enhanced his body came with the downside of destroying his ability to thermoregulate, anyway. 

 

it seemed like the worst was behind him, and that was all that mattered. now that he was  _ sure  _ that peter wasn’t vomiting all the time and that he wasn’t a couple wrong moves away from death, tony decided to let the kid come to him if and when he was ready. after all, rhodey was definitely right. smothering peter would be unhealthy for both of them. friday would have told him of any unhealthy activity, which had set his mind at ease when everything had seemed to just  _ stop  _ after the incident in the gym. 

 

peter grinned, looking back at tony as he stepped into the elevator. the smile was fake, of course, and he felt a rising sickness invade his head. this wasn’t new, of course, but it seemed so much  _ stronger _ , like a gust of wind would knock him over. 

 

“see you soon, mr stark,” he said, false sunshine lacing his voice and projected happiness in his eyes. 

 

“see you soon, kiddo,” tony replied as the doors closed. 

 

peter raked his hand through his hair, feeling limp strands and failure. at this rate, he’d have to start keeping dry shampoo on him just so nobody picked up on it, because problems like his could be picked at like a stray thread only for his entire life to fall apart at a curious person’s feet like an old wool sweater. the garage, where happy would be waiting, was still at least twenty seconds away because the elevator could only travel so fast and his personal floor was so high above the ground that peter swore he got altitude sickness at times. 

 

“friday, what’s my full physical status?” peter asked the top right corner of the box. 

 

“you need an override code to hear that information. shall i ask sir-”

 

“no! no, i’m- i’m fine. thank you,” peter almost shouted, his voice high and tense. it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen this coming but denying him access to information about his own body was something he’d at least half hoped that tony wouldn’t do. he sighed, leaning against the side of the elevator. peter couldn’t stand unassisted for long periods of time anymore. he suppressed the shaky feeling that threatened to make him vibrate straight through the floor and wondered whether he was getting physically ill because of how little he ate actually stayed in his stomach or if the physical demands of this way of life were catching up with him. 

 

the doors opened on a happier than usual happy, the suit dampening the man’s cheerful mood slightly by giving him an air of formality (though, for how much tony treated him like a friend more than a chaffeaur even while happy was on the clock, the fact that he still wore suits had become slightly strange a few years in but nobody had seemed to find it important enough to mention). peter opened his mouth to quip about the good mood but quickly shut it again, feeling bile rage out of his stomach. he swallowed weakly and smiled at happy reflexively. it seemed like the worse the darkness that invaded every part of his life got, the more he smiled, as if to compensate. 

 

“ready to go?” happy asked, raising his eyebrows slightly at how skinny peter looked and how he was still leaning against the side of the elevator even after it’d been more than a few seconds since it had opened. 

 

peter’s mouth seemed dry all of a sudden, his tongue feeling like it had swollen up and like it was just sitting heavily, one wrong move away from lolling out.  

 

“yeah, just. hold on,” peter said, his words slurring ever so slightly. happy’s brow creased, the cheerful mood gone. 

 

“shall i take your bags for you?” he slowly said, more a statement than a question. heaven knew that peter was on par with tony on terms of accepting as little help as he could and then even less than that. if he’d simply grabbed a bag, peter would have gotten even pissier than he was already. 

 

“nah, i just-” reaching an arm out to grasp at the handle of a suitcase that seemed so  _ very  _ far away, peter stumbled. 

 

“alright, sit down.” happy didn’t know what the hell was wrong with the kid but despite the slurred words and loss of coordination, he refused to believe peter was drunk. tony would have mentioned a dent in the liquor supplies or peter outdrinking thor, which would be the only way to get enough of the stuff into his system for it all not to shoot straight through him and his enhanced metabolism. 

 

peter’s face suddenly took on the appearence of a sheet of paper, becoming  _ even paler _ , if that was even possible. his body went rigid. 

 

“alright, you’re scaring me. friday, what the hell is-” peter crumpled, as if whatever was holding him up on his feet had failed. he fell to the floor like a conker falling out of a tree in the middle of autumn and when he hit the ground, happy wondered with a sense of sick dread how he didn’t split in two or shatter. “peter? peter, can you hear me?” happy looked helplessly around the garage, as if looking for  _ anyone  _ who could help him, before focusing back on the very obviously  _ unconscious  _ young boy. 

 

“sir has been notified of mister parker’s condition,” friday’s speakers blared, too loud in the silent space and echoing through the room. the dim light cast out from the elevator did nothing to conceal how sickly peter looked, and happy became more and more panicked, words stuck in his throat and frozen. 

 

“do we need an ambulance? fuck- what’s  _ wrong _ with him?” happy shouted, not even trying to remain composed. besides, who was there to remain composed for? the only witness was currently passed out on the fucking  _ floor _ . 

 

“i will transport him to the medbay,” friday replied, a dull resignation in her tone. happy did a double take. was he missing something? why was friday talking like that and why had it avoided both his questions about peter’s condition? 

 

the elevator doors closed again, but not before happy squeezed through. he might not have shown it at times but he  _ liked  _ the kid, and seeing him fall to the floor had thrown what seemed like his whole life off kilter. this was the worst reminder possible that peter was human, not infallible or a ball of sunlight and too-loud speech. he was human, and that scared happy to no end; humans could, and did, get hurt. the box surged upwards, and happy looked at peter, unsure of whether to pick him up or if that would make his condition worse. 

 

“friday, call his aunt may. i don’t think we’re going to queens any time soon,” happy forced through gritted teeth. 

 

“wha’ ‘bout may?” peter asked faintly, still not moving but with his eyes propped open. in that moment, happy reminded him of nothing more than a tired kid who had to be carried into the house after falling asleep in the car. 

 

“welcome back, kid. can you move?” 

 

peter’s fingers and toes twitched. 

 

“yeah,” he replied, his voice sounding as if his throat was lined with sandpaper. he tried to stand up with a dogged determination that was beat into a person after a lifetime of living in queens. this was  _ his  _ problem. he was not going to drag his aunt and happy into it too, not after he’d dragged tony and captain  _ fucking  _ america into it. 

 

“uh, not happening, kid,” happy sighed, tilting his eyes to the ceiling as if he could make tired eye contact with friday, “you just dropped like a hot potato. you wanna get up? i’m carrying you.”

 

peter blinked incredulously at happy, wanting to get annoyed at him for treating him like some  _ kid  _ but not being able to summon the energy. 

 

“no, i’m, uh, fine,” peter said tiredly, the strain of maintaining conversation already too much for him, “thank you though!” he added hastily. happy almost smiled, glad that he was still himself enough to trip over his words and be  _ too  _ polite. 

 

the elevator doors opened and the harsh light of the medbay crashed like a wave into peter’s eyes. he groaned softly, trying to raise an arm to shield his eyes but finding that it just wouldn’t come up. lethargy bled through his bones until it was all he could do to stay slumped against the wall instead of flopping bonelessly to the floor like he had before. peter intended to keep hold of the last shred of pride he had left, and he was going to do it even if it killed him (which, it was just occuring to him, it probably could).

 

“can you stand?” bruce asked, his voice calm even in the face of a terrified happy and a half awake peter. 

 

“the hell he can. i’ll carry him to wherever you need him, bruce,” happy interjected, fiercely protective. 

 

“no, i’m too heavy. it’s fine, i can walk,” peter rebutted, grasping at the rail in the elevator to pull himself up. 

 

bruce raised an eyebrow at peter’s insistence that he was  _ too heavy _ , looking at the length of his forearm that was exposed by him reaching upward and seeing the outline of bone and a wrist so thin that bruce could probably wrap his hand around two of them and still have room to spare. the utter disbelief quickly gave way to concern, seeing how much peter was struggling to hold up his own weight. he was on his feet now, but only just. 

 

happy looked from peter to bruce, begging the doctor to do  _ something  _ to make peter accept help. bruce shook his head. he knew from the many, many times he’d had to talk tony into a bed (a  _ hospital  _ bed) that he needed to think he was perfectly independent, or he’d start acting like he’d throw a fit if he so much as looked in the direction of a single heart monitor. peter would be similar to tony in some degree, because in nearly every other way he could think of, peter acted like a shrunken down tony stark. it was a definitely creepy, yes, but the predictability was refreshing. 

 

“i know that we don’t really know each other that well, so we’ll do introductions now, okay?” bruce said, aware that him talking could make the difference between peter feeling like he was still in the compound and him feeling like he was in a stuffy, anxiety inducing hospital. they were walking to the room where peter would be staying, peter stubbornly walking ahead but swaying on his feet, bruce just behind him, ready to catch him in case he fainted again, and happy trailing speechlessly behind. when bruce got no reply, he cleared his throat. “i’m bruce banner, also known as-”

 

“the most renowned scientist of this generation,” peter interrupted, glancing behind at the man with a smile. 

 

bruce felt himself tear up slightly but nodded. being recognised for his years of work instead of a seperate entity inside of his body was refreshing, and the abruptness of the interruption was surely deliberate, probably to let him know that peter didn’t only think of him as  _ the hulk _ . 

 

“i’m peter parker. i’m also spider-man,” peter said dazedly, feeling reality slip away again, just like it had before the first time he’d fainted. “nice to meet you, bruce banner!” he whispered feverishly before his knees buckled underneath him, but before he could hit the ground, bruce caught him and lowered him, meeting the cool floor in a much less painful manner than he’d expected. 

 

“we’re almost at your bed, and i’m going to carry you the rest of the way, alright?” he heard a voice say, loud as if it was screaming yet so quiet it was whispering. above all, peter could hear his own pulse racing in his head. 

 

across town, may was driving as fast as she could while still obeying traffic laws. if she was pulled over, she wasn’t sure what she’d do, and there was no way she could afford a speeding ticket, anyway. she’d been called by a fucking  _ robot  _ and told that peter was unconscious. the situation grew exponentially more catastrophic in her mind until she was shaking and muttering to herself under her breath that  _ peter’s okay he’s okay oh god what if he’s dying he has to be okay oh god  _ but by the time she pulled up to the parking lot of the compound, she was sweating slightly, and having to consciously stop herself from pulling her own hair out. 

 

she exited the car and slumped onto it, begging her mind to just  _ be quiet _ and that she would never be able to provide peter comfort if she was falling apart herself. may swept her hair back; it’d all fallen out of the style she’d put it in for the last get together with her colleagues that morning because of how she pulled at it when she was anxious. the robot (friday, it called itself) was so  _ vague,  _ only giving generalisations and avoiding questions almost as well as the man who created it. in all of may’s years working in a hospital, she’d come to know how doctors spoke to a person’s family when they were going through a surgery that just didn’t seem like it was going to work. friday spoke like that doctor, hesitant to tell any sort of bad news yet but knowing that it would be coming. 

 

may knew that it was selfish, but if peter died, she would have nobody left. 

 

she straightened up with a deep breath and let her mind focus on peter’s wellbeing. that was  _ all _ that mattered. may was determined as she marched into the compound, ready and willing to see the boy she’d come to think of as a son in any condition as long as he was  _ alive.  _

 

bruce held a distraught tony back from the hospital bed. to examine peter, bruce had needed to take off all the layers of clothing that peter had taken to wearing, and without them, he looked so frail that it was like he’d crumble to dust all over again if someone so much as looked at him wrong. in the harsh, clinical light, peter’s cheekbones looked unforgiving and angular, threatening to split the skin on peter’s face. his bones seemed to split the skin they were held by until tony couldn’t see peter anymore, only a skeleton lying on the bed wearing peter’s face. 

 

“but- he was- he was getting better,” tony whispered, a hand shooting up to cover his mouth in disbelief. looking at peter was like looking at a car crash. he felt vaguely nauseated by how much of a disaster he’d become in such a short period of time and yet he couldn’t look away. that was his  _ son  _ lying in that bed, and he couldn’t help but feel like he’d failed because of how he’d neglected to notice the boy withering away right before his eyes. 

 

may burst into the room, eyes immediately zeroing in on the bed. she took a sharp breath in, tears springing to her eyes, (what had peter  _ done _ to himself?) and  locked eyes with tony and bruce, silently searching for some kind of answer. 

 

“what- what is wrong with my nephew?” she whispered as if to protect the stillness in the room, as if by speaking any louder she might upset the fragile calm that the quiet brought, inviting the rest of the world to descend into chaos. 

 

“may, i, uh. i need to talk to you about something. please step outside with me and sit down,” bruce said in a low voice, taking her arm and ushering her out. 

 

tony could hear the hushed voices in the hallway growing steadily quieter as bruce and may walked away. his best guess was that bruce was going to the kitchen to make may a mug of that herbal tea that he worshipped so much while he explained the shitshow that had become all of their lives. tony knew that it wasn’t his fault but he couldn’t help but feel angry at peter for hiding all of this and letting his condition get so dire before anybody realised exactly what was going on. underlying the anger and pain was a fierce love, one that tony imagined that howard never had for him, and one that would drive him to stick by peter’s side like one of his webs through whatever help and therapy he needed to be back to  _ normal.  _

 

he knew that peter might not be the same after he recovered (because he  _ would  _ recover. tony stark was  _ not  _ going to let peter die because of this  _ thing  _ that had taken away so much already) because mental disorders took and took and took until nobody was sure where  _ it  _ began and the person inside ended. whoever peter turned out to be after this was over and the dust settled would be someone tony still loved. that was one thing he knew for sure. 

 

he put his hand on top of peter’s on the hospital bed, grasping the weak hand within his own and feeling bone. tony cried, letting his heart of iron break until it was no more than muscle that was beating too hard. he looked up again at peter’s face, the skin white as porcelain, and wiped away his own tears. 

 

“hey, underoos,” tony started with a hollow laugh, “if you were awake, you’d feel guilty about me crying over you. you’d also tell me that this wasn’t my fault. well, i’m- kid, you know i love you. i hope you know that. i just don’t know how or why you hid so much away from everyone.” he paused to breathe, feeling another sob threaten to bubble over and spill through his eyes and mouth. tony turned his face to the ceiling, laying the hand that wasn’t holding peter on his chest as if to check it was still rising and falling. 

 

“hey, mr stark,” peter said faintly from the bed. tony jerked, surprised that peter was awake so soon and slightly embarrassed at the state he was in. 

 

“hey, pete,” tony replied, feeling so many emotions ( _ too  _ many emotions) surge upwards through his body. the feelings were almost like physical sensations, and tony was afraid of the fact that one teenager could make him feel so much. 

 

“i’m sorry i fell in your elevator. did i scuff the floor?” peter asked, regret evident in his tone. 

 

“peter, the floor- i don’t care about the floor that much, or at all, even. what i want to know is how you’re doing,” tony replied, trying to make his face look as sincere as he wanted his words to come across. peter’s expression became blank. the blinds were up and the walls had been reinforced. this was exactly what tony had been scared of, exactly the type of situation he’d become mortally afraid of the second he saw peter bent over his kitchen sink. tony would work something out, yes, but what if he couldn’t do it quickly enough?

 

“i’m fine, mr stark, honestly. i’m sorry for taking up so much of your time,” peter droned monotonously, his mind quite obviously far away from the sentences he’d spoken. tony sighed. 

 

“riddle me this, peter. how come friday, my extremely intelligent artificial intelligence, didn’t notice you were doing this?” tony asked, somewhat begrudgingly. he felt like he knew the answer already but he needed to  _ know  _ so that nothing like  _ this  _ would ever happen again. 

 

“mr stark-” peter started, but trailed off. it soon became clear that he wasn’t going to finish his sentence. 

 

“peter. please tell me. please,” the man begged. “i’m just scared for you. i don’t want you to… god, peter, just tell me what you did, okay?” 

 

all peter wanted to do was go back to sleep. he could hear may and bruce’s hushed voices growing steadily louder as his aunt became more and more distressed but he couldn’t make out the words. they were all underneath a blanket of static laid down by his inability to eat and keep food down. he used to be able to clearly hear whispered conversations from as much as five or more blocks away, but the past week had seen him growing steadily weaker. he didn’t even  _ care  _ about spider-man anymore. when peter realised that, he knew that he’d gotten to the point of no return (he would either get out of this hole and never be the same person again or he’d die of the slowest suicide he’d ever heard of) and that if the suit was taken away, he wouldn’t even blink. 

 

“i got friday to agree to keep my stuff a secret as long as i didn’t do myself any damage that was too bad and she just wanted to make you happy and my issues are clearly hurting you and i’m  _ sorry _ -” peter sobbed, throwing his arms around tony with all the meagre strength he had left. he cried for the last seven days which had shaken him to his very core, he cried for everyone he’d made life difficult for, and he cried for the trembling uncertainty that encapsulated his being. 

 

tony clung to peter, unable to do anything but stare at the wall opposite and feel peter’s bones through the hospital gown. may stepped back into the doorway, her hair now completely down and tear tracks on her face. bruce appeared behind her, an awkward bystander to all the misery contained within the room. 

 

“i’m going to have to call cho. i’m really not qualified to even  _ begin  _ treating you so she’ll be able to make sure peter doesn’t… and in the meantime, i’ll try and find a nutritionist _ andmaybeapsychologist,”  _ bruce explained, his speech speeding up until the very end was a jumbled mess of syllables. he stepped quickly out of the room, leaving the family to their own devices. 

 

“i don’t want help,” peter wailed, despite his arms gripping tony even tighter as he said this, “i don’t  _ need _ \- there’s nothing wrong with me.” 

 

tony and may looked at each other over peter’s head, tony pleading may with his eyes to say  _ something  _ and may silently asking what she could say in this situation. 

 

“i’m so, so sorry i wasn’t here for you, peter,” may started, stroking his hair like he was the same small child who’d crawled into her bed during a particularly loud thunderstorm years before, “but we’re all here now. we can save all the heavy conversations for later but you need to let everyone help you, sweetie.” between the three of them, the only reason the room hadn’t flooded with tears was because none of them wanted to be weak enough to let them fall. 

 

a couple of seconds passed, may still holding peter and peter still holding tony. 

 

“mr stark, can i have a couple seconds with just may, please?” the boy asked after letting go of tony, looking like he had exactly no reason to want to have the inevitably difficult conversation that would start as soon as the man left but accepting that he had very little choice in the matter. 

 

“sure,” tony replied, clapping his hands together once before standing up from the bed and walking out of the room without looking back. if he’d looked back or hesitated at all, he might have done something stupid like beg to stay. 

 

there was no way that tony would be able to concentrate enough on whatever he decided to work on enough for it to actually be safe. not wanting to risk injuring himself and having to be in a hospital bed himself instead of taking care of peter ( _ all  _ his thoughts centred around peter, especially while the boy was so clearly balancing on the tipping point between life and death), tony called doctor zelah in order to change peter’s initial appointment to a much sooner date and to change the venue from his office to the avenger’s compound. 

 

“hello! hey, doc. is there any chance we could make the appointment under the name ‘peter parker’ come a little sooner? yeah, he’s not in good shape right now and we need all the help we can get, here.”

 

“i’m sorry but mister parker’s appointment was cancelled,” the doctor replied, his voice puzzled. “i received an email from him politely declining the appointment. may i remind you that if he doesn’t consent to treatment, the only way you’ll be able to force him into it is by having his legal guardian commit him.”

 

tony nodded slowly, dragging his hand down his face. of  _ course  _ peter declined the appointment. 

 

“boss,” came friday’s voice from the ceiling, “mister parker has asked that you debrief the avengers on his condition. he and his aunt both agree that he is in no fit state to do it himself.”

 

“not a good time, fri. uh, sorry, doctor zelah, i wasn’t talking to you just then. i will talk to peter about accepting help but with the absolute pit he’s dug himself into, if he doesn’t agree, i might have to take his aunt up on committing him. have a good day,” tony concluded, ending the call before the doctor could get another word in. 

 

the avengers had to be debriefed. 

 

to tell the truth, tony wasn’t all that surprised that peter had crossed that bridge in his mind before he had himself. when something upset tony, he tended to get tunnel vision, obscuring everything not directly related to it in a fog of disinterest. eventually, though, the rest of the gang would want to know what happened to peter, and why he wasn’t training with them (because he wasn’t going to, at least not until his weight was restored), and a million and one other questions. 

 

fixing on his best press release smile, tony resolved to get it over and done with. at least the band aid would be ripped off and the worst pain he could possibly feel would all be felt at once, instead of spread over weeks and weeks. 

 

“friday, tell the avengers to gather in the communal living room. tell them that it’s important and that under no circumstances are they to skip it. they have fifteen minutes,” tony said breezily, used to ordering the rest of the team around via friday. it was the only way they got anything done, after all, and so tony had taken advantage of the artificial intelligence’s capabilities countless times over the previous years. 

 

tony was reeling, so confused and  _ scared  _ by the rapid progression of the events of the past week. the only thing keeping him afloat was the guilt that wrecked him and yet motivated him to do  _ more  _ to help peter. tony would find a way to take himself apart, molecule by molecule, just to make peter smile. he let his feet take him to the elevator and saw his hand reach out to press the button that would take him to the communal floor. he was floating above his body, driven only by coffee and pain. tony had to do this for peter. tony told himself that maybe if he did this one thing for peter, he’d be able to forgive himself. 

 

the avengers were already gathered on the various cushions and beanbags scattered around the room. each person (and one non-person: vision) turned their heads toward tony as he arrived and took in his appearance. the man had obviously been crying, his feet were bare in a quite unsettling contrast to his usual steel toed work boots, and he held himself with the posture of someone who’d turned away from a world that decided to take everything that was dear to them. the room remained silent. 

 

“this is about peter,” he started hesitantly, “and if i say all of this, it becomes real. please don’t say anything until i’m finished because now that i’ve started this once, i don’t think i could start all over again.” tony paused, wringing his hands together and avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room, “peter is very, very sick. he almost certainly has an eating disorder, even though we don’t have a formal diagnosis yet. friday, what’s his body mass index at this moment?”

 

“peter parker’s body mass index is currently seventeen point four.”

 

“what was his body mass index seven days ago?”

 

“seven days ago, peter parker’s body mass index was twenty three point seven.”

 

“thank you, friday,” tony said tiredly, past the point of being capable of crying or even being surprised by what he’d just heard. “if anyone needs clarification on what body mass index is and what’s healthy, you can ask friday or vision after i’m done.” the heroes all exchanged the same concerned stare. even those who didn’t know the intricacies of the human body inside and out knew that the figures mentioned were incredibly grave. “he’s very sick, and with his metabolism, if he carries on for much longer, he might d- he might even die. peter will not be training with us for now, and probably not for quite a while, and will not be on active duty for even longer. that is all you need to know.” tony turned on his heel to leave. 

 

“i’m sorry that the spider-man is struggling so much. we all hope he recovers well and recovers soon,” wanda called out to tony. the man froze, turning back around to reveal a face of pure, unadulterated fury. 

 

“his name is _peter_ , not _the_ _spider-man_ ,” tony seethed, “he is more than his suit, and that suit is _nothing_ without him. i thought you of all people would understand separating public perception from a real life person, _scarlet witch_.” tony’s chest heaved, his breaths heavy yet uncertain. he’d lost all sensation in his shaking fingers as his pure anger finally found a convenient target to focus on. 

 

“woah, okay. tony, how about we go calm down  _ somewhere else _ , and we all go on with our lives, okay?” clint interjected, not wanting to become the latest target of tony’s disdain but clearly seeing how the harsh words combined with the famous  _ tony stark death glare _ was affecting wanda. the girl was only a couple years older than peter and she looked every little bit the baby of the team, with tears in her eyes and the expression on her face suggesting that she’d burst into tears if nobody intervened. 

 

tony let himself be led away by clint while the rest of the crowd remained crowded defensively behind wanda, shellshocked. 

  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. broken down shell

peter felt like everything that had ever existed, everything that existed in that moment, and everything that would come to exist explode into blinding colour behind his eyelids and behind the skin of the middle of his forehead. brilliant yellows and pinks raged inside his brain, sending him to his knees on the bathroom floor. there was no fever that he could sweat out but he sure as all hell could eat and eat and eat and then purge it all out.

in the medbay, they’d put a tube down his throat to pump him full of calories and things that were supposed to be good for him. the doctors had smiled and insisted that what they were doing was for the best, and simply tied his arms to the bed after he managed to choke out the tube for the second time. tony and may had visited, just so they could witness with their own two eyes how peter was getting _fat_ again. where was his control?

after a couple days, when the doctors were sure that peter wouldn’t do something stupid like faint if they took the tube away (with its _nutrition_ and _health_ and _20,000 calories a day_ ) they finally set him free. he went back to the apartment with may, who had proceeded to only leave him alone if he was asleep or showering, and who prepared three meals a day, every day, without fail. she cried in her bedroom when peter refused the sustenance but he found himself less and less able to care with each passing day.

once he was allowed to go back to school, peter grabbed onto the opportunity to avoid food like the plague with both hands. his weight plummeted over the course of a week until he was only five pounds heavier than what he’d weighed just before that fateful day when happy had practically gone into cardiac arrest over his limp body.

sometimes, it was a matter of _what’s eating peter_ and figuring out what was _wrong_ with him. ever since his stint in the medbay a couple weeks before, he could see the pitying looks from his aunt and from his friends. he knew that his skin was dull and pale, and that the spaces underneath his eyes had become smudged blue pieces of evidence of his miserable way of life.

other times, though, it was _what’s peter eating_ and wasn’t that question a can of worms?

when peter’s feelings ate him, they consumed until all that made him a human being was in the stomach of the demon he’d made of himself. he was simply food for the creature that he’d created, floating in space and being so at peace with his own demise that his body decided to at least grant it to him for once, instead of fighting so hard to keep itself alive despite pleading from peter to do the complete opposite. how ironic was it that peter had become exactly what he hated? he despised food with every fibre of his being but became fuel for his own nightmare. at least if there was a higher power, they had a wicked sense of humour. the nightmare was in the shape of a donut, but it had sharp teeth and fingers dripping with jam and melted chocolate and all the other things he never really ate anymore, not really, because binges didn’t count he never tasted what he ate he just shoved it in and in and in and he ate even as he cried oh _god what’s so wrong with me oh-_

waking up in a cold sweat from one of his many nightmares revolving around food wasn’t an uncommon experience, but it never got any less distressing. when he peeled off his clothes, peter stared into the mirror for what seemed like the fiftieth time in the twenty four hours previous (he was so _sure_ that his face was swelling up with weight that he couldn’t really be putting on because he didn’t eat nearly enough, but the reflection in the mirror seemed to take up more space each day) and marvelled at the colour his skin turned under the moonlight. it was a pale, sickly shade of blue that he thought only existed in monet paintings. as long as he didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom, it remained a liminal space and nothing could crawl out of the shadows to _get_ him. he could stay blue and sweaty and frantic as long as he didn’t have to turn the light on and actually _face it._

he threw his clothes into the hamper next to his wardrobe. the basket was constantly full of pyjamas, bedsheets, and clothes that he’d accidentally vomited on. he never let may take any of the washing anymore, bringing it to the machine himself with a smile and claims that he just wanted to be more _independent_ and in possession of life skills that he’d need when he went somewhere like college where may wouldn’t be able to baby him anymore.

god, _college._

peter was sure he wouldn’t be alive by the time he was eighteen, or however old he’d be when he went to college. tony had mentioned something about getting him into a college of his choice earlier, like he’d done, but he wasn’t sure how exactly that would work, what with all the new child protection rights that had come about. he wouldn’t be able to live on a campus, at least not with an adult roommate. peter was sure- peter _hoped_ that his heart will have given out by the time college rolled around. he hoped that one day, his heart would palpate like it usually did in the middle of a particularly huge heave of vomit, and then just stop. peter fantasised about it, often drifting away in the middle of a conversation or a lesson just to imagine all the ways that his self-destruction could kill him. his super healing factor wasn’t so super anymore, and peter could feel his entire body decaying. he embraced it. the peter of merely a few weeks before would have been scared, but the peter of the present welcomed every single malfunction of his not-so-perfect body.

peter flopped back onto his bed, but changed his mind about trying to go back to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. what he really wanted to do was stare at himself in the mirror until the image distorted and he didn’t feel like a tangible being. he shook out his arms and legs, preparing them for the inevitable pain of standing up again so soon after being allowed to lay down. pushing himself up to his feet, he grabbed a new pair of pyjama bottoms and opened the closet, staring at the reflection in the mirror.

his collarbones were protruding, _but not enough._ what peter was doing to himself wasn’t about losing weight, but he needed the control of starvation, and weight loss was just a by-product of that control. each bone that became visible was just proof that peter was doing the one thing he’d always known how to do, starve. at least if he was losing weight, peter was hurting himself properly, but it was never solely about getting smaller. he’d always wanted to take up less space, but that wasn’t the same thing as wanting to get smaller. it just wasn’t. it _couldn’t_ be. that’s why peter couldn’t possibly have an eating disorder, right? he wasn’t like the girls on television who starved themselves to look like models in magazines because their clothes stopped fitting them and they felt insecure about it. his face was gaunt, but peter could see a jawline that was more prominent than it had been a month before. critically, as if he was a curator studying a painting, he ran his hand over all the skin on his face and upper body, feeling how much each bone stuck out of his skin and noting with satisfaction that he appeared to have lost weight.

peter was saving up for a proper set of scales so he could study his physique better. tony could easily provide him with the money he’d need in a heartbeat but everyone was so suspicious of him nowadays. he’d obviously want to know why he needed the money and honestly, peter couldn’t be bothered to think up a half decent lie. he was making tiny cash withdrawals from the credit card he’d received from tony, small enough that the amounts could be quickly explained away. his favourite excuse was that he was buying candy for his friends from a bodega that only took cash.

what really got to him was the fact that nobody took him at his word anymore. when he visited the compound and tried to reject dinner so that he and tony could work on whatever lifesaving invention they were tinkering that day, he’d gain a vaguely annoyed look from the man and a plate of pizza being shoved in his face a half hour later, even if he truly wasn’t hungry that day instead of trying to restrict his intake.. he could eat breakfast with may before he went to school and throw it all up in the bins behind the apartments (he didn’t even need to stick his fingers down his throat anymore; he couldn’t physically stomach anything bigger than a sandwich, and even that was pushing it) and take her damned packed lunches only to throw them away and he could dirty up the plates so that may would think that he ate something before she finished her shift but that didn’t change the fact that nobody trusted him anymore. he’d be offended, except he was doing exactly what everyone feared, so he couldn’t exactly hold it against anyone for being suspicious, even if he never left any proof whatsoever of his activities anymore.

suddenly, his head became one throbbing centre of blood filled pain and he wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong with him but he knew that he needed to sit down, and there was no way he was going to be able to walk to his bed, even if it was only four steps away. bathed in blue light and sweat, peter collapsed into the chair pulled back from his desk, thanking him-in-the-past for the convenient placement. he was pretty sure that he’d moved the desk to be near his mirror when he was thirteen and would walk to the mirror but be unable to stand up for too long in front of it, too fatigued and non-enhanced to support himself for any length of time. he groaned and rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, scrunching up his face until he could feel every crease and fold of fat that had sprung from his cheekbones and his jaw in the few seconds he’d been turned away from his reflection.

peter sank into a dreamless, murky sleep after being sat at the desk for a few minutes. he’d told himself that he’d walk back to the bed as soon as he’d summoned the strength, but he wasn’t able to beat his body into submission like before. he would be scared if he wasn’t so fucking tired.

  
\--

the alarm on peter’s phone jolted him awake, his head jumping up from his folded arms sat atop his desk. he groaned, knowing that his body more likely than not hated him for sleeping hunched over at a desk the whole night. he extended his arms and legs, feeling each joint pop.

for the first time in years, an incredibly pressing thought occurred to peter.

he couldn’t keep on living like this.

the statement crawled up his throat, slicing it from the inside with hydrochloric acid and vulnerability. if he just didn’t admit that he probably needed help, he could convince himself he really didn’t need it. peter could blame his fuzzy early morning brain for the fleeting idea of him just going to the compound, throwing himself at tony’s feet, and screaming the words _“i need so much fucking help please get me help i can’t live like this anymore please please-“_

peter stood abruptly, tugging on one of the many shirts he’d need to wear underneath a jumper to keep himself warm and his peers in the dark. his entire being felt like a compilation of unfinished sentences and unfinished thoughts, abandoned because he was too cowardly to reach he natural conclusions to his trains of feeling. tugging on another layer of clothing, peter sighed and furiously scrubbed at his face to keep the tears at bay. there was no use crying now, not when everything had already fallen to shit. this was just the aftermath of years of trauma. it was the natural conclusion to his train of feeling.

peter looked at himself in the mirror while turning from side to side, deciding that he was happy with the amount of clothing he had on. he didn’t need anyone noticing the weight he’d lost. peter was fine. peter was spider-man (even though tony had taken the suit after his second binge/purge session at the tower and peter had denounced him in his head. tony was no longer a hero, he was just an obstacle between peter and everything he’d ever wanted: stability and a semblance of control over his shitshow of a life).

first, he was going to go to school. all his heroes were dead, and anyway, peter was going to save the world, so what were a few classes and a few hunger pangs?

he gritted his teeth, finished getting dressed, and smiled at may as he walked out the door to face his breakfast.

she seemed more morose than usual that morning, and peter hated that he didn’t care why. he wanted to care, he truly did, but everything now fell into the categories _food_ and _irrelevant._ he still tried to feign sympathy as he slid into his seat, damning himself to hell as he asked, “what’s wrong?” , choking down his first mouthful of food of the day. distantly, he wondered whether his vomit would be more yellow or orange because of the egg on his plate. he let himself look questioningly at may when he heard no reply, but she pointedly looked at his plate, as if to say that whatever she had to say was going to wait until he ate his breakfast like a normal person and pretended that he liked to eat food in the morning (or at all).

“you need to eat, peter,” may whispered as peter finished shovelling the small portion of toast and eggs down his throat. peter blinked, looking up at her and raising an eyebrow.

“i am,” peter deadpanned, gesturing at his empty plate.

“i know what you’re doing, peter. please, i need you to stop. i just- i can’t stop you and it makes me angry, yes, but it also makes me so scared. i am so scared for you, baby,” may pleaded, wringing her hands under the table and trying to stop tears from coursing down her face. her lungs felt like they were being constrained with a rubber band and that it kept being looped around and around, stopping the air from being able to fill her lungs. it was all she could do to not just outright sob when she could see peter wasting away in front of her, despite the evidence being presented to her that suggested that he was eating properly.

may usually kept her feelings separate from peter, so he must’ve really fucked up if he was getting an emotional intervention, of all things. he opened his mouth to answer back before his stomach violently rejected the food he’d just eaten. peter panted, staring at the regurgitated food all over the table in front of him. he blinked, looking at it in disbelief as if it would jump back into his stomach if he intimidated it enough. may looked like she was going to faint. the vomit was yellow, not orange.

he stood up, directing the most venomous, hateful look he could towards may (another obstacle between him and the control he _needed_ ) just because he could, and stormed out of their apartment, poisonous anger coursing through him. peter’s heart beat as fast as a hummingbird’s while his hands shook. he burst out into the streets of queens, appreciating the hustle bustle and the sounds of the city, not feeling like he was drowning in sensation like he usually did whenever he stepped outside for the first time in a day. he felt like he was floating above it all, suspended in a beam of light and oblivious to the train wreck that was his breakfast. peter shook his head to get the expel the thoughts from them. he wasn’t going to go to school. what had he been thinking that morning? peter cursed himself for not just climbing back into his bed and asking for a sick day. he should’ve known that something like that would’ve happened. peter was getting more and more _unhinged_ , and peter really couldn’t afford that, not if he wanted to dazzle the world with his faked boyish _recovered_ charm and earn his spider suit back.

alcohol. peter needed alcohol to calm his nerves. he also needed a binge, and he knew exactly the place he could get both.

feeling the weight of all nine layers of clothing he’d put on just to look like his body was anywhere near a “healthy” weight dragging him down to sink through the floor, peter trudged to the small independent gas station about six miles from his apartment. he’d heard about it through hushed whispers at school. the guy at the counter reportedly didn’t ask for identification, not caring how old anybody was as long as they paid the price for the products. peter didn’t look anywhere near twenty one, even with all the age that his new way of life had piled onto his features, so he needed that rumour to be true. he didn’t know what he’d do if it wasn’t. feeling around his pockets, peter blew out a long sigh of relief, closing his fingers around his wallet, home to the stark credit card with the unlimited balance.

he would feast like a king with money that wasn’t his. peter would feast and gorge and devour everything he couldn’t buy, and then he would bring it back up just because he could. peter didn’t know why he was doing it anymore, only that he didn’t want to stop, but he had the feeling that no matter how much he hated it, peter would be doing it for as long as he physically could. he’d previously abstained from using the credit card so that tony didn’t know what he liked to spend his money on but peter just couldn’t find it in himself to care anymore.

so what if he knew? the whole world could know and peter wouldn’t give half a damn as long as he could eat and throw up and be disgusting and kill himself in peace.

peter parker didn’t have a problem. peter parker was perfectly fine, and if anyone suggested otherwise, he’d stomp right over them and keep going (his destination was unclear, even to him, but he sure as hell was going to get there). he arrived at the gas station sweaty and panting for breath. he stared at the man at the counter, seeing his face come in and out of focus as his body decided whether it was a good time to fall unconscious or not.

alas, his brain decided to keep peter awake.

he stalked the isles of the station’s shop, grabbing food with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. a box of pop tarts. a packet of oreos. breadsticks. salt and vinegar rice cakes. by the time he was done, he had what was probably the strangest assortment of food that had ever been put together, but the feral demon within his head was screaming for a binge, and it wasn’t about the food that was eaten (he could eat cardboard and toilet paper as long as it filled his stomach and he could throw it back up) but it was the sensation of being split open by the sheer volume of what he stuffed into his stomach. at the last minute before the man rung up his purchases, he grabbed five small bottles of vodka and dropped them on top of the huge pile of food.

the man raised an eyebrow, looking from the pile of stuff to peter, and back at the pile again. he shrugged minutely before scanning all of the food and booze.

“that’ll be fifty two dollars and thirty two cents,” the man drawled in a slightly whiny voice. peter let himself make eye contact with the man but his gaze was immediately drawn to the bright display of red and blue behind him.

slushies.

peter hadn’t had one since he was young and innocent and carefree. it was a long enough time ago that peter wasn’t sure whether he would’ve been with his parents or may and ben. he hoped he was with his parents.

gazing at the machines full of artificially coloured iced liquid, peter cleared his throat and wetted his lips. he acknowledged that he probably looked like a maniac but there was suddenly no room in his life for anything but the slushies. he needed one so badly. preferably the blue one, so that he’d be able to tell with certainty if his stomach was bleeding from all the throwing up he was surely going to do. the red slushie would be too close to the colour of his blood.

“and two large blue slushies,” peter gasped out, eyes flicking wildly to look at the man at the counter. the man looked slightly unnerved, looking the young boy up and down before deciding he couldn’t possibly be a threat. peter wondered if that guy thought he was someone who dropped out of school to be a full time crack addict.

“that brings you up to fifty eight dollars and thirty two cents,” he finally said. peter used the credit card to pay, having to wordlessly ask the man at the counter for help putting the card in because his hands were shaking too badly to do it himself.

fifty eight dollars’ worth of food was more than may spent in two weeks for them both, and peter was just going to eat and drink and then puke it away.

he laid out his purchases on the floor at the back of the station, arranging the packets until they looked _just right_ in a rectangle flat on the ground. peter wasn’t sure what constituted _just right_ but he wasn’t going to expend the energy needed to think clearly and rationally. he wondered if psychosis ran in his family.

he downed the two slushies first as a marker, making sure to remember that he would stop throwing up only when he saw a shocking blue come back up out of his mouth. peter took a swig from the bottle of vodka, loving the burn of it going down his throat. it was going to taste absolutely disgusting when he inevitably vomited it back up later, but peter was revelling in the alcohol hitting his veins, metabolism slowed enough by his starvation to fully enjoy the effects of intoxication. he felt like throwing the bottle at the floor just to watch the clear liquid dribble around and make a puddle. his sadness was everything he needed to maintain his control but it was everything wrong in the world. maybe peter was crashing and burning so spectacularly because he was becoming a secondary character in his own motion picture and he desperately needed for the camera to stay on him, because if nobody looked at him, he didn’t exist.

peter needed desperately to exist.

he stuffed his face with the food he’d laid out, starting with the packet of shortbread he’d laid down at the top right of his rectangle of food. he crammed it down his throat, long after the feeling of fullness had descended into the realm of painful nausea. he was crying by that point, sobbing around mouthfuls of vile food and starting to open a new packet before he’d even finished the one he’d been on. peter was crouched over in the parking lot in a frenzy, and nothing short of killing him would have stopped his binge.

he was way too far in to quit now.

with that thought, peter sputtered, hunching over and using the bin in front of him as support as he emptied the contents of his stomach all over the concrete floor. all of the horrible gas station food he’d made himself eat just so he could feel the harrowing comfort of being so totally, sickeningly full tumbled out of him at an alarming speed. he couldn’t stop the flow as the vomit changed colour, from orange to yellow to brown and finally a startling neon blue, signifying that he’d finally cleaned out his stomach. it was truly violent, the food punching and kicking and screaming all the way from his stomach to the floor in front of him.

he reeled, straightening his back before black spots clouded his vision. peter gasped out loud, reaching out as if anyone could simply pull him from fainting. nobody was there to witness how low peter could truly sink at the back of the station in the middle of the day. because it was during the working day and it wasn’t a busy area anyway, peter had the whole place to himself. it was the perfect venue to his wretched misery. he clutched his stomach and fell to the side, narrowly missing the puddle of puke, writhing around in place as the worst of the stomach cramps rolled through him like waves of a tsunami slamming into a beach.   
the pain was there until it wasn’t, and peter found himself able to breathe again. with whatever part of his brain handled decision making, he decided that he probably needed to clean himself up. he probably looked pathetic. he probably had puke on his face and clothes because he wasn’t as graceful (if anyone could even use that word for _this_ ) about purging when he was intoxicated. stumbling drunkenly to the grimy bathrooms, peter wiped the vomit off his face with the back of his hand. the motion dragged his lips to the side of his face while he looked in the mirror. he really, truly looked in the mirror for the first time in more than a month.

his skin was pink and blotchy. he looked pale, so pale that he provided a stark contrast to the disgusting tiles behind him, so full of dirt and unidentifiable substances (it was ghastly and revolting and foul, just like him) and not for the first time, peter thought of drinking bleach so he could clean out his insides. his lips were red and glistening from leftover bile and spit. his cheeks were sunken slightly, and it took him a second to realise that the darkness on either side of his face were shadows cast by his protruding cheekbones. he hadn’t seen himself in the light of day, but every time he’d looked in the mirror at night, he hadn’t looked anything like he was already dead instead of just starving. he either looked like he was dying or dead, depending on what time it was. his head looked angular and hard. the bags under his eyes looked like bruises just beginning to form, like some maudlin version of a dying flower. he fleetingly thought that it probably looked worse than it was in the cheap bathroom light but that excuse was quickly swept away; the lightbulbs were cheap but there was only so much worse bad lighting could make something look. he’d not looked so… ill for years. the last time he looked like a living ghost, he’d been thirteen years old and fifteen pounds underweight. peter didn’t even want to know how much he weighed anymore but he knew that his body was going to start shutting down if he carried on any longer.

worst of all were his eyes.

they looked like the colour of dry mud after a drought. they were absolutely dead, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a corpse, dead with its eyes open but with an expression of kind resignation. _hello death, my old friend,_ the corpse would have said, walking into the reaper’s arms and being taken to wherever people go after their breathing stops. peter’s eyes looked like they’d seen too much, which he supposed they had. he was too young to have these eyes. with a jolt, peter remembered that he was just fifteen (and a half; the half was important) and that he wished his biggest problem was the science homework that was currently sitting at the bottom of his bag, like any other person his age. he wished that he was worrying about the prom instead of hurting himself so badly that he wasn’t entirely sure if he would even be alive for it.

his gaze flickered somewhere just below his eyes themselves, focusing instead on the darkened skin below. peter hung his head even lower, noting with some sort of resigned exasperation that he couldn’t look himself in the damn face anymore without gripping the sink so hard that his knuckles turned white. well, it didn’t exactly take much for his hands to turn that pale yellowy colour anymore. his skin barely stretched across his bones even when his fingers were relaxed anyway.

two red patches on his knuckles contrasted with the stark brightness of everything around him. seeing them felt like a slap to the face. peter didn’t want to say or even think the dreaded b-word because _bulimia_ was an _eating disorder_ and peter didn’t want to admit that maybe he was out of his depth, and maybe he wasn’t controlling food, and maybe it was the other way round (had he ever controlled this? peter dreaded the answer. if he didn’t have control, he would die, and peter was so, so tired of dying over and over again) but this thing that he was doing to himself wasn’t beautiful in the slightest. he felt disgusting and faint and halfway dead every single time he dragged himself out of bed in the morning and as of late, the feeling didn’t even go away when he slept.

at that moment, peter had a monumental realisation. it had been brewing in his mind for weeks now, but it had just finally wrenched itself out of peter’s head and landed in the sink in front of him.

_he didn’t want to die._

reaching with fumbling hands into his pocket, peter grappled with his phone, choosing to ignore all the missed calls and messages from happy, tony, and may (his friends were used to him skipping school by now, so he didn’t get panicked messages from them every time he didn’t turn up anymore. peter wasn’t entirely sure whether he was hurt or comforted by that).

he pressed the screen frantically before bringing the device up to his ear. it was ringing.

it was ringing.

it was ringing.

“kid? where the hell are you?” mr stark almost shouted down the phone, the anger wrapped in concern and downright fear. tony was _terrified_ , but peter was too, so that was _okay_ , and it was all _okay_ , so goddamned _okay_ that he could scream it from the rooftops.

“i need help,” peter said, his voice high and thready. he sounded manic, and even he himself was unsure of what he was feeling in that moment.

“okay, you’re okay, i’ll get you all the help you need. just stay put, okay? i’m coming to get you,” tony replied, close to tears of joy and relief at the fact that the kid had finally admitted he needed help. as he very nearly literally jumped into the nearest car to him, he heard peter sob.

“i’m not okay, mr stark. i’m nowhere near okay. i need help, so much help, so much help.”

peter laughed, and found that he couldn’t stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow!! this is the last chapter of this fic. this'll definitely be a series because i need to write more about this concept solely for the purposes of venting. i'm really emotional about this story ending and i hope that i reached even just one person with my words, and i hope that i touched one person's very soul. 
> 
> if you liked this story, you can find me on tumblr @fuckmarvel, where i post behind the scenes ramblings and fic previews before i post them to ao3!!

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @fuckmarvel !!! please leave comments and kudos bc they warm my gremlin heart and every single person who leaves one automatically goes to heaven


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